Aliya Sternstein reports: The government has mailed out letters to AmeriCorps participants and applicants informing them that personal information may have been breached due to flaws in the program’s website, federal officials announced on Friday. The security weaknesses date back to 2006, they said. Each year, the federal AmeriCorps program offers more than 70,000 citizens…
Category: Government Sector
Mississippi National Guard investigating data breach
Shelia Byrd of The Associated Press reports: The Mississippi National Guard is investigating the extent of a security breach after nearly 3,000 active members’ personnel records, including social security numbers, were posted online for several weeks. […] The National Guard and the AP were notified about the breach by Aaron Titus, information privacy director of…
Hacked D.C. online voting system stored login and encryption key on server
Kim Zetter writes: An internet-based voting system that was hacked last week by researchers at the University of Michigan stored its database username, password and encryption key on a server open to attack. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the university, has detailed the vulnerabilities and hacking techniques his students used to completely control the system…
Canadian Privacy Commissioner troubled by poor computer disposal practices and lack of controls for wireless devices in government
The federal government’s use of handheld communications devices and its practices for disposing of unneeded paper documents and surplus computers could expose the personal information of Canadians to unauthorized disclosure, Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart has warned. The findings, stemming from two separate privacy audits conducted by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of…
Hackers Steal $600,000 from Brigantine, NJ
Brian Krebs reports: Organized cyber thieves took roughly $600,000 from the coastal city of Brigantine, New Jersey this week after stealing the city’s online banking credentials. The break-in marks the second time this year that hackers have robbed the coffers of an Atlantic County town: In March, a similar attack struck Egg Harbor Township, N.J., which lost…
Higher Damages Possible in Prison Privacy Breach Lawsuit – Court
Courthouse News reports on the latest legal development in a lawsuit that started with a privacy breach in 2001 involving employees at the Federal Medical Center in Kentucky: Staff members at a prison hospital in Kentucky might be entitled to more than $1,000 each for the breach of privacy that occurred when a federal investigator…