Tim Johnson reports: The digital operations team at the Democratic National Committee hit some dark days after Russian hackers mauled their networks in 2016, hijacking dozens of computers and pilfering tens of thousands of emails to hand over to WikiLeaks and onto the internet. Remnants of that digital bruising linger. “I feel like everyone’s still…
Category: Miscellaneous
Heathrow Airport Limited fined £120,000 for serious failings in its data protection practices
From the Information Commissioner’s Office, this monetary penalty notice in response to a breach previously noted on this site: Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) has been fined £120,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for failing to ensure that the personal data held on its network was properly secured. On 16 October 2017 a member of…
MD: 600 Anne Arundel County library computers affected by “Emotet” virus
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…
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…