Remember all that advice that I and Brian Krebs tend to give consumers about putting “freezes” on your credit reports instead of “alerts?” The freezes are supposed to prevent entities from opening up any new lines of credit or accounts in your name. They are supposed to prevent problems instead of just detecting problems after…
Category: Of Note
Equifax breach: worse than they thought
Matt Weinberger reports: Equifax, the credit agency targeted by an infamous hack that exposed the personal data of nearly half of the population of the United States, revealed more details about the incident in a federal filing on Monday evening. The upshot: The breach was worse than Equifax originally said. The company originally said 143…
Georgia governor vetoes ‘hack back’ bill
Good! Ryan Johnston reports: Following weeks of outcry from cybersecurity companies and independent researchers, Republican Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed the state’s proposed “hack back” bill on Tuesday. The bill, SB 315, sought to create the misdemeanor crime of “unauthorized” computer or computer network access, criminalizing the act of “intentionally” logging into a computer or website hosted in Georgia without the user first…
Russians posed as IS hackers, threatened US military wives
CNBC reports: Army wife Angela Ricketts was soaking in a bubble bath in her Colorado home, leafing through a memoir, when a message appeared on her iPhone from hackers threatening to slaughter her family. “Dear Angela!” the Facebook message read. “Bloody Valentine’s Day!” “We know everything about you, your husband and your children,” the message…
Halifax police won’t charge teen arrested in Nova Scotia privacy breach
CBC News reports: Halifax Regional Police say they won’t be charging a 19-year-old man arrested last month for downloading files from Nova Scotia’s freedom-of-information portal. Spokesperson Neera Ritcey said in an email Monday that after a thorough investigation, police determined there were no grounds to lay a charge of unauthorized use of a computer against the teen….
Two Romanian citizens extradited to Atlanta to face cyber and fraud charges in connection with “vishing and smishing” scheme
From the government’s press release: ATLANTA – Two international computer hackers, Teodor Laurentiu Costea and Robert Codrut Dumitrescu, were extradited from Romania and arraigned on federal charges of wire fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, computer fraud and abuse, and aggravated identity theft. A federal grand jury returned the 31-count superseding indictment on August 16, 2017. Cosmin…