Stephanie Steitzer reports that names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of roughly 28,000 state retirees were e-mailed without the required encryption to the Kentucky Retirement Systems by Walgreens Health Initiative, its pharmacy benefit provider. Affected retirees were notified by letter from WHI, who informed recipients that the mistake was “solely the responsibility of…
Category: Government Sector
Australian hacker sentenced for 3 years
Following up on the story reported last week, Renai LeMay and Alex Serpo of ZDNet Australia report that David Anthony McIntosh, the former CSG employee who crashed several government services at Berrimah Prison, Royal Darwin Hospital and the Supreme Court on May 5 last year and who deleted over 10,000 public servants from the system,…
Central Ohio Transit Authority employees notified their SSN disclosed
Debbie Gebolys of The Columbus Dispatch reports that more than 900 current and former COTA employees recently learned that their Social Security numbers had been sent to 51 health-insurance companies who were bidding on providing disability insurance to COTA. This was apparently not the first time this type of thing had happened. In 2006, COTA…
ID: Ada County computer system displayed social security numbers
Ysabel Balbao of KTVB reports that Ada County officials are investigating how a file that is typically for court and jail use only wound up exposed on the web. The file is a listing of everyone booked into the county jail and displayed the names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth of over 200…
Stolen-data trove offers look inside a botnet
Jordan Robertson of the Associated Press reports on what researchers from Prevx found on a Ukrainian web site used as to store data from 160,000 infected computers. What they found included data from a Georgia bank that exposed customer details and credentials for the bank’s wire-transfer system, and data from two states’ systems. Read more.
UK: New Forest District Council blunder exposes residents’ details online
At least 200 Hampshire residents applying for permission for a new extension, wall or fence learned that their names, home addresses, email details, phone numbers, and signatures had been posted on the New Forest District Council’s web site despite the council’s policy of redacting such information. The breach was discovered by The Daily Echo. Read…