On February 1, Coastal Cape Fear Eye Associates in North Carolina notified HHS of a hacking incident that impacted 925 patients. Unlike many other ransomware reports where there is no clear evidence of PHI acquisition or compromise, in this incident, there was evidence of actual compromise, although no evidence of exfiltration. Here is the entity’s…
Category: Hack
Ex-student suspect in Mississippi State University records tampering case
Therese Apel reports: According to Mississippi State University officials, one former student is the target of a search warrant in an investigation into university record tampering. MSU Chief Communications Officer Sid Salter told Logan Kirkland of the Starkville Daily News that the student graduated in December. The identity of the suspect and the nature of…
Equifax Hack Might Be Worse Than You Think
AnnaMaria Andriotis reports: Hackers in the Equifax Inc. breach accessed more of consumers’ personal information than the company disclosed publicly last year. Equifax said, in a document submitted to the Senate Banking Committee and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that cyberthieves accessed records across numerous tables in its systems that included such data as…
Voter, Bee databases hit with ransomware attack
Adam Ashton reports: Two Sacramento Bee databases on a third-party computer server were seized last month by an anonymous hacker who demanded The Bee pay a ransom in Bitcoin to get the data back. The intrusion, which was discovered by a Bee employee last week, exposed one database containing California voter registration data from the…
FBI Private Industry Notification warns schools about TheDarkOverlord
On January 31, 2018, the FBI released a Private Industry Notification (PIN) warning schools about the hacker(s) known as TheDarkOverlord. The information in the PIN was provided by the FBI and the Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General, and it appears to be an expanded version of a prior alert to schools issued by…
Inside North Korea’s Hacker Army
Sam Kim reports: ….. North Korea’s hacking prowess is almost as feared globally as its nuclear arsenal. Last May the country was responsible for an internet scourge called WannaCry, which for a few days infected and encrypted computers around the world, demanding that organizations pay ransom in Bitcoin to unlock their data. A few years…