King5 staff report: The Pierce County Housing Authority is conducting an investigation into a security breach that impacts all the people on the county’s wait list for Section 8 housing. The staff does not yet know how it happened, but the names and social security numbers of all the people on the wait list appeared…
Category: U.S.
VA: Personal data for 13,000 state workers inadvertently released
Annie McCallum reports: Personal data for 13,000 state employees was inadvertently sent to 11 state human resource and payroll employees. The personal information included employee names and Social Security numbers, according to a statement from Anne Waring, Virginia Department of Human Resource Management communications manager. The department was notified by Conexis, Anthem’s subcontractor for Flexible…
GA: Thousands of social security numbers sent in email
And this may be the winning entry for “Email Gaffe of the Week:” An employee error compromised thousands of people’s personal information, including social security numbers, the Georgia Department of Labor said. A spreadsheet containing the names, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and email addresses of 4,457 people who filed for unemployment in Georgia was…
Two Romanian Nationals Sentenced to Prison for Scheme to Steal Payment Card Data
An update on a breach previously noted on this blog: Adrian-Tiberiu Oprea, 29, of Constanta, Romania, and Iulian Dolan, 28, of Craiova, Romania, were sentenced today to serve 15 years and seven years in prison, respectively, for participating in an international, multimillion-dollar scheme to remotely hack into and steal payment card data from hundreds of…
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reverses dismissal of negligence claims against Heartland Payment Systems
It seems it isn’t all over for a lawsuit by nine financial institutions against Heartland Payment Systems following a mammoth breach disclosed in January 2009. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s dismissal of negligence claims and remanded. Here’s part of the opinion, issued yesterday: Turning to the case sub judice, we hold the…
Update on Department of Energy hack (updated)
More details are available about the Department of Energy hack that occurred in July. Mathew J. Schwartz reports: According to an email sent to all DOE employees on Aug. 29, information on 2,532 current employees, 3,172 former employees and seven employees on leave was stolen in the breach, which occurred in July. At the time, DOE…