Bob Brewin reports on a breach that I don’t think we knew about here: A laptop belonging to a contractor working for the Veterans Affairs Department was stolen earlier this year and the personal data on hundreds of veterans stored on the computer was not encrypted, a violation of a VA information technology policy, said…
Category: Of Note
Stolen Laptop Exposes Personal Data on 207,000 Army Reservists
Brian Krebs reports: A laptop stolen from a government contractor last month contained names, addresses and Social Security numbers of more than 207,000 U.S. Army reservists, Krebsonsecurity.com has learned. The U.S. Army Reserve Command began alerting affected reservists on May 7 via e-mail. Col. Jonathan Dahms, chief public affairs for the Army Reserve, said the…
Ukrainian in biggest credit card con job held in Delhi
Faizan Haider reports: Officers from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its Indian counterpart detained a Ukrainian national from the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) on Monday for his involvement in Net fraud and identity theft. The man, Sergey V. Storchak, was travelling on a Jetlite flight S2 120 (Goa-Mumbai-Delhi). He is alleged to…
IRS Divulges Personal Taxpayer Information
The Internal Revenue Service does not always properly authenticate the identity of taxpayers calling its toll-free assistance lines before providing them with confidential tax account information, according to a new government report. The report, by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, found that taxpayers who call the IRS-toll-free lines are at risk of having…
Heartland breach expenses pegged at $140M — so far
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: The costs to Heartland Payment Systems Inc. from the massive data breach that it disclosed in January 2009 appear to be steadily adding up. Quarterly financial results released by Heartland last week show that the card payment processor has accrued $139.4 million in breach-related expenses. The figure includes a settlement totaling nearly…
Visa Warns of Fraud Attack from Criminal Group
Brian Krebs reports: Visa is warning financial institutions that it has received reliable intelligence that an organized criminal group plans to attempt to move large amounts of fraudulent payments through a merchant account in Eastern Europe, possibly as soon as this weekend. In an alert sent to banks, card issuers and processors this week, Visa…