Today, Experian disclosed another data breach. This one affected 15 million customers of T-Mobile USA, for whom Experian hosts consumer data used for credit checks for new accounts. In tweeting my frustration about this latest incident, @emptywheel suggested I post the complaint I filed with the FTC about Experian in 2012. After some thought, I’ve decided…
Category: Of Note
Experian’s servers hacked; 15 million T-Mobile USA customers affected (UPDATED)
There’s been another data breach involving Experian, it seems, although this one didn’t involve their credit reporting database. Instead, it involved data Experian houses for T-Mobile USA. In a letter to affected T-Mobile USA customers, Experian CEO Craig Boundy writes: I am writing to let you know of an incident that occurred involving T‐Mobile USA data housed…
Reports slam OCR’s poor oversight of HIPAA covered entities, breach followup efforts
If you follow HHS’s public breach tool and investigations closely, two reports from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) finding lax oversight and insufficient follow-up will come as no surprise. Susan Hall of FierceHealthIT has a good recap: The former report was based on reviews of a statistical sample of privacy cases investigated by OCR between September…
Russian Developer of the Notorious Citadel Malware Sentenced to Prison
Dimitry Belorossov, a/k/a Rainerfox, has been sentenced to four years, six months in prison following his guilty plea for conspiring to commit computer fraud. Belorossov distributed and installed Citadel, a sophisticated malware that infected over 11 million computers worldwide, onto victim computers using a variety of infection methods. According to U.S. Attorney Horn, the…
Patreon Hacked: Some User Information Compromised (UPDATE: Data Dumped?)
Brady Dale reports: Another company has been hacked, but this time it’s one that’s working to help creative people support their work and keep the lights on as they do so: Patreon. The company facilitates ongoing, recurring payments to creative people or projects as a way of showing support for what they do. Jack Conte, CEO…
Watchdog: Top Secret Service official wanted information about Chaffetz made public
Shades of J. Edgar and dirty politics! I’m classifying this as a privacy breach and also an infosec breach as these data were supposed to be protected. Carol D. Leonnig and Jerry Markon report: The Secret Service’s assistant director urged that unflattering information the agency had in its files about a congressman critical of the service should be made public,…