John Langeler reports: Most people would enjoy getting a $7,000 check in the mail. In the case of one West Seattle man, all the check indicated was his identity had been stolen. “The check had my Social Security Number on it as well as another woman’s name,” he said, asking us not to release his name,…
Category: Hack
Security firm report says Target data hack was low tech
Jennifer Bjorhus reports: The U.S. Secret Service has called the criminals behind Target Corp.’s monster security breach well-organized, “highly technical” and “sophisticated.” But cybersecurity firm McAfee Inc. said in a report out Monday that the heist was anything but exotic, describing the attack as a Breach 101 operation. The thieves used easily modified off-the-shelf malware, common methods…
Statista Says Around 50,000 Users Are Impacted by Data Breach
Eduard Kovacs reports: On Saturday, we learned that statistics company Statista suffered a data breach. The company has responded to my inquiry about the incident and provided additional details. It turns out that roughly 50,000 users are impacted by the data breach. The incident was discovered after spam emails started landing in email addresses that have…
Victim of 2012 hack, British Pregnancy Advice Service fined for violating the Data Protection Act (Updated)
Some breaches are potentially much more harmful than others. A March 2012 hack involving the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) fell into that group, and I was so concerned about the breach and the threatened data dump that on Twitter, I publicly called out members of Anonymous for sitting back and not speaking up to try to dissuade…
Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace reports hacker accessed payment card data
Tom Incantalupo reports that Long Island-based Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace is notifying customers of three of its stores that hackers may have acquired payment card numbers and expiration dates – but not cardholder names, personal identification numbers, security codes, customer addresses or any other personal information. The retailer learned of the breach when they were contacted by a…
Hackers breach a Johns Hopkins University server and upload student information when uni doesn’t respond to extortion demands
Scott Dance reports: Names and contact information of as many as 1,300 current and former Johns Hopkins University biomedical engineering students were posted online Thursday, stolen by someone claiming to be part of the hacker group known as Anonymous. The server that was breached did not contain Social Security or credit card numbers, or any…