Jamie Williams writes: The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued an opinion rejecting the government’s attempt to hold an employee criminally liable under the federal hacking statute—the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (“CFAA”)—for violating his employer-imposed computer use restrictions. The decision is important because it ensures that employers and website owners don’t have the power…
Category: Of Note
House committee OKs bill to counter stolen credit card forums
Cory Bennett reports: The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a bill aimed at cracking down on the cyber thieves who profit from stolen credit card information. The Cybercrime Anti-Resale Deterrent and Extraterritoriality Revision (CARDER) Act would give law enforcement more tools to go after foreign criminals who sell credit card data stolen from Americans…
University of Rochester Medical Center settles NYS Attorney General charges stemming from HIPAA breach
Back in May, I noted that University of Rochester Medical Center was notifying 3,000 patients because a departing employee had taken patient information with her for her new employer to use to recruit patients. Now NYS Attorney General Schneiderman has announced a settlement with URMC over the HIPAA breach. The settlement requires the center to pay a $15,000…
Hacker sent ‘death to the Jews’ text messages after breach in phone network
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…
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…