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…
Category: Government Sector
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…
Public sector crippled by ‘lovesick’ hacker
Emily Watkins of Northern Territory News reports that a man who was drunk and upset over the breakup with his fiancee hacked into the government system using her password and deleted 10,475 accounts from the Health Department, hospital, prison and Supreme Court servers. It reportedly took 130 experts to find the problem and fix it,…
Army database may have been breached
Doug Beizer of Federal Computer Week reports that an Army database containing personal information about nearly 1,600 soldiers involved with the Operation Tribute to Freedom program during the past five years may have been accessed by unauthorized users. The potentially compromised information does not include Social Security numbers, but does include names, phone numbers, addresses,…