Paul Farrell reports: A hacker attempted to send more than 4m text messages saying “death to the Jews” by exploiting the network of a global telecommunications company. A Guardian investigation has revealed that data was stolen in 2013 as a result of unauthorised access to the systems of SMSGlobal, which provides messaging services for “some of the world’s…
Category: Of Note
China Accused Of ‘Massive’ Hack Into AU’s Bureau Of Meteorology
Chris Uhlmann reports: China is being blamed for a major cyber attack on the computers at the Bureau of Meteorology, which has compromised sensitive systems across the Federal Government. Multiple official sources have confirmed the recent attack, and the ABC has been told it will cost millions of dollars to plug the security breach, as other…
VTech hack included children’s pictures and chat logs (Update 1)
Lorenzo Franceshi-Bicchierai has a follow-up to his early report on VTECH: Over the weekend, the hacker, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that VTech left other sensitive data exposed on its servers, including kids’ photos and chat logs between children and parents. This data is from the company’s Kid Connect, a service that allows parents using…
Triple-S Management Corporation Settles HHS Charges by Agreeing to $3.5 Million HIPAA Settlement
Congratulations. You’re on one of the few sites that reported on some concerning breaches in the healthcare sector involving Triple-S, a licensee of Blue Cross Blue Shield in Puerto Rico. I first reported on them in 2010, including the $100K fine they were handed, and then I reported on them twice in 2014, including when they were handed a $6.4M…
UAE: Hacker holds UAE bank to ransom, demands $3m
Mazhar Farooqui reported this on Nov. 25: A sinister cyber criminal has hacked into a Sharjah bank and is now holding it to ransom by leaking confidential data of clients on social networking and microblogging site Twitter every few hours, XPRESS can reveal. The criminal who goes by the moniker Hacker Buba and uses a…
VTECH Hack Exposes Data on More Than 200,000 Kids and Almost 5M parents (update2)
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai reports: The personal information of almost 5 million parents and more than 200,000 kids was exposed earlier this month after a hacker broke into the servers of a Chinese company that sells kids toys and gadgets, Motherboard has learned. The hacked data includes names, email addresses, passwords, and home addresses of 4,833,678 parents…