Two companies that maintain large amounts of sensitive information about the employees of their business customers, including Social Security numbers, have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they failed to employ reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect the data, in violation of federal law. Among other things, the settlement orders require the…
Category: Of Note
SOE hacked: 12,700 credit card numbers and 24.6 million accounts may have been compromised
Togikagi writes: As we previously reported, all Sony Online Entertainment services, games, forums and web sites went offline this morning as a result of the recent Playstation Network intrusion. SOE just issued an announcement, and it appears that the personal information of players may have been compromised. Here are the details straight from SOE: “Our…
Sony game user accounts breached; 77 mil. may be affected
Looks like we have a new addition to the Top 10 list of all-time biggest breaches. Taro Koyano of Yomiuri Shimbun reports: The personal information of about 77 million users worldwide of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation and Qriocity online services may have been leaked, the company said Tuesday. Sony said its PlayStation Network services for online…
Sealed Records Exposed In Major Court Gaffe
In a shocking failure to protect sensitive details about dozens of ongoing criminal investigations, federal officials somehow allowed confidential information about sealed cases to be publicly accessible via the court system’s online lookup service, The Smoking Gun has learned. Over the past nine months, details of 40 separate sealed court applications filed by federal prosecutors…
Verizon-USSS 2011 data breach investigations report released – what do they know that we don’t?
The annual report based on breaches investigated by Verizon and the U.S. Secret Service is out. On first reading of the report and the available media coverage, the big headline seems to be that while the number of records or data lost is down significantly, the number of breaches is significantly up – and more…
DOJ takes steps to take down Coreflood botnet that infected 2.3 million computers
Today the Department of Justice and FBI announced the filing of a civil complaint, the execution of criminal seizure warrants, and the issuance of a temporary restraining order as part of the most complete and comprehensive enforcement action ever taken by U.S authorities to disable an international botnet. The botnet is a network of hundreds…