Chase Cook reports: About 600 Anne Arundel County Library computers were exposed to a computer virus, prompting officials to take the computers out of service and ask customers to monitor personal information for fraudulent activity. It was announced Saturday that the computers were exposed to a virus called Emotet, which targets users through sophisticated email…
Category: Miscellaneous
App flaw let anyone access UK Conservative politicians’ data
Jon Fingas reports: The UK Conservative party is learning a hard lesson about the importance of basic security measures in mobile apps. Users have discovered that you could log into the party’s conference app using only an attendee’s email address, providing access to all kinds of sensitive data. And when many of the conference participants are…
Computer hack cost Pennsylvania’s Senate Democrats $700,000; others pay less-costly ransoms
Deb Erdley reports: Pay now, or pay later. Leaders of the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Caucus faced those options when hackers infected their computer system in March 2017, holding it hostage with ransomware. Officials at the Westmoreland County Housing Authority faced the same dilemma when hackers held their computers and phones hostage in July. The Housing…
United Nations Accidentally Exposed Passwords and Sensitive Information to the Whole Internet
Micah Lee reports: The United Nations accidentally published passwords, internal documents, and technical details about websites when it misconfigured popular project management service Trello, issue tracking app Jira, and office suite Google Docs. The mistakes made sensitive material available online to anyone with the proper link, rather than only to specific users who should have…
NY: Arc of Erie County fined $200,000 for online security breach
Jonathan D. Epstein has an update to a breach originally reported in March of this year. The Arc of Erie County – a nonprofit social services agency formally known as Heritage Centers – will pay a $200,000 fine to the state, review its policies and analyze its potential electronic security risks after a breach of…
Democratic Party Says It Thwarted Attempted Hack of Voter Database
Update: the phishing attack turned out to be a simulation. See links in the comments below this post. Sheera Frenkel and Jonathan Martin report: The Democratic National Committee said Wednesday that it was alerted to an attempted hack of its voter database this week and that it had notified law enforcement. The effort to target…