Benjamin Herold reports: The American Institutes for Research, a major research and testing organization with a significant presence in K-12 education in the United States, suffered a serious data breach earlier this month. After one of the organization’s servers was hacked, the sensitive personal information of as many as 6,500 current and former employees, including Social…
Category: Hack
The MCCCD breach: Breach costs now approach $20 million
Mary Beth Faller reports that breach costs for the Maricopa County Community College District (“MCCCD”) breach continue to rise: The Maricopa County Community College District governing board has approved an additional $2.3 million in lawyers’ fees to deal with the computer-security breach that occurred last year. The board also approved spending $300,000 to deal with…
Global raids round up hackers using Blackshades RAT
Danny Yadron and Christopher Matthews report: The Federal Bureau of Investigation and foreign police agencies have launched a series of raids around the world at the homes of people linked to a type of hacking software called Blackshades, according to posts on hacker forums and people familiar with the investigation. The software is what experts…
Former Subway franchise owner admits to POS hacking
There’s an update to a Subway breach previously reported here. Jeremy Kirk reports: A former owner of several Subway fast-food restaurants in southern California pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges stemming from a gift card scheme that involved tampering with several other Subway stores’ computerized cash registers. Federal prosecutors accused Shahin Abdollahi, 46, of Lake Elsinore, California,…
Commentary: We need a congressional inquiry into the MCCCD breach
President Truman had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.” We could use more of that accountability when it comes to data breaches in the education sector. Back in 2006, when I first began blogging about data breaches on PogoWasRight.org, I covered a series of breaches at Ohio University. One of the things that…
University of Nebraska – Omaha Investigating Security Breach Involving Personal Information
KPTM reports: School officials at UNO say they are investigating unauthorized access to an administrative server within campus security. They say an incident was discovered last week during a security scan and that the server contained files with personal information and Social Security numbers. Police are looking into the case to see if any individuals’ personal…