A police officer who admitted snooping through the force computer and obtaining personal data about people has been fined £4,800. Pc Adrian Merron, 46, was due to stand trial on a total of 58 charges. But the Lothian and Borders officer admitted 10 charges and the Crown accepted not guilty pleas to the rest. Six…
Category: Non-U.S.
Swiss Bank Data Studied by Baden-Wuerttemberg for $1 Billion in Unpaid Tax
Patrick Donahue reports: German authorities in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg are examining tax information offered by an informant detailing what may be illicit funds stashed in Swiss accounts, though they said they won’t buy stolen data. Finance Ministry officials in the southwestern region received an offer from an informant who claimed to have information on…
AU: Hacker hits Ballarat City Council files
Benjamin Preiss reports: Ballarat City Council’s online network was in meltdown yesterday after it was discovered somebody had broken into the system. One source, who had specific details about the security scare, said a teenager from regional Victoria had gained access to the system. ”Essentially the level of access that’s available is complete and unrestricted…
UK insurer hit with biggest ever data loss fine
John Oates reports: Zurich Insurance must pay an enormous £2.3m fine for losing thousands of British people’s personal data. The fine was imposed not by the Information Commissioner’s Office but by the Financial Services Authority. Zurich Insurance lost 46,000 customer records including some bank details when a tape back-up went missing between two sites in…
New German ID cards easily hacked
The sensitive personal information found on the new German identification cards with data chips scheduled for nationwide introduction this November can be easily hacked, according to testing done by a TV news show. Public broadcaster ARD’s show “Plusminus” teamed up with the hacker organisation the Chaos Computer Club to find out how secure the controversial…
Russian government email servers hacked
Evgeniya Chaykovskaya reports: On Monday it turned out that the Federal Service of Protection (FSO) is not that good at protecting its own privacy. Yesterday internet forums were bubbling with information about a hack into the FSO internal email system. The attack was aimed at an email server of one of the services’ departments, the…