Nathan Ingraham reports: Earlier this year, a hacking group broke into the personal email account of CIA director John Brenner and published a host of sensitive attachments that it got its hands on (yes, Brenner should not have been using his AOL email address for CIA business). Now, Wired reports the group has hit a much more sensitive and presumably secure target:…
Category: U.S.
CT AG Jepsen, Hartford Hospital, Contractor Reach Agreement Resolving Investigation into Breach of Unencrypted Patient Information
There’s an update to a breach that I previously noted in 2012, and it reinforces the importance of your business associate contracts and the importance of monitoring them if you’re a HIPAA-covered entity: Hartford Hospital and the EMC Corporation will pay $90,000 and have agreed to institute additional training and control measures to resolve an…
MO: Business Owner Pleads Guilty After Customers’ Information is Stolen in Bank Fraud Scheme
Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced yesterday that a former business owner in Sparta, Mo., pleaded guilty in federal court to his role in allowing his customers’ information to be stolen and used to promote a bank fraud scheme that used stolen mail and fake identifications to cash nearly…
CA: Berkeley High student linked to racist ‘screen hack’
Emilie Raguso and Lance Knobel report: Berkeley High School administrators say they have identified the student responsible for a “screen hack” in the library Wednesday that displayed racist threats against African Americans. Berkeley High Principal Sam Pasarow said, during a press conference Thursday afternoon, that a student, believed to have been acting alone, was responsible for the…
In a first, the FCC is fining a major cable company for getting hacked
Brian Fung reports: In the first such case against a U.S. cable company, federal regulators are slapping Cox Communications with a $595,000 fine after Cox allowed hackers from Lizard Squad to penetrate its systems and steal private customer information. By posing as an IT administrator and tricking a couple of Cox employees into giving up their login credentials, a…
Huntington Medical Research Institutes discloses two HIPAA breaches in one-month period
HIPAA Journal reports: Nonprofit biomedical research company Huntington Medical Research Institutes (HMRI) has announced two HIPAA breaches in the space of a month: One involving the improper disposal of records, the other an alleged theft of patient data by a former employee. The insider breach reportedly impacted 4,300 patients. Read more on HIPAA Journal. The…