From their newsroom: Although most offices are winding down for the holidays, Penn State’s privacy office remains active. The University currently is working to notify nearly 30,000 individuals about privacy breaches that may have exposed their personally identifying information. Malware infections to University computers caused all of the breaches, which occurred in the Eberly College…
Category: Malware
Spyware snags Akron Children’s Hospital patient and employee info
The Associated Press reports that Scott Graham of Ohio faces prison time after pleading guilty in federal court to felony charges of intercepting electronic communications by using spyware to spy on a woman’s computer activities. By spying on her, he also accidentally retrieved confidential information from the computer system at Akron Children’s Hospital, where she…
PA: Malware opens door to possible information exposure
From Pennsylvania State University’s web site: A computer in the Dickinson School of Law that contained 261 Social Security numbers from an archived class list was found to be infected with malware that enabled it to communicate with an unauthorized computer outside the network. As soon as the University became aware of the malicious software…
UCSF belatedly announces September data breach
Chris Rauber reports: UC San Francisco said late Tuesday it has alerted 600 patients and others that an external hacker may have obtained “temporary access to emails containing their personal information” as a result of a late September phishing scam. The breach occurred about three months ago, and was investigated in mid-October, but wasn’t disclosed…
EIU warns of student data security breach (updated)
From the Associated Press: Eastern Illinois University says someone outside the school may have broken into files containing personal information from about 9,000 current and former students and applicants. The university on Friday said it found a number of viruses on a server used by the university’s admissions office that could have provided outside access….
Malware rebounds as cause of data loss
The 2009 CSI Computer Crime and Security survey identified a number of shifts in significant cybersecurity threats this year. Malware infections jumped to 64% from 50%, reversing a dip in the number of companies experiencing malware infections that started in 2005. That year, the figure was 74%. Other significant changes were an almost doubling in…