Jason Miller reports: Tens of thousands of current and former Homeland Security Department employees are at risk of identity theft after officials discovered a vulnerability in the vendor’s system for processing background investigations. All DHS employees working in the headquarters office, for the Customs and Border Protection and for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement components…
Category: U.S.
Blaming the discoverer of a breach probably not a wise move
More on the Lifeline breach involving TerraCom and its affiliate YourTel America: Scripps Howard News Service has its report on the breach here, and has also published a companion piece with video of how they discovered the breach. As reported previously, Scripps reports that when notified of the leak, TerraCom had accused Scripps of accessing…
Who – if anyone – is responsible for notifying victims of some breaches?
I’ve blogged a number of times about how although law enforcement may uncover breaches or data theft, the victims often do not get notified in a timely fashion – if at all. Here are just a few scenarios where no one may notify people whose data have been stolen: Law enforcement discovers a handwritten list…
Savanna police report numerous debit and credit card fraud reports
Now what? Is this another big merchant breach or one we already knew about? Thomas Geyer reports: Police in Savanna, Ill., have received numerous reports of debit and credit card fraud from residents and called in the U.S. Secret Service for assistance. Savanna Police Chief Michael Moon said all of the banks and credit unions…
FBI, city of Akron investigating hacker attack that compromised identities of 8,000 taxpayers
Jenn Strathman reports: Cyber hackers from Turkey hacked into the city of Akron’s website and replaced city messages with politically-motivated ones on Thursday. Also, nearly 8,000 taxpayers had their personal information stolen including their names, addresses, and social security numbers. I don’t know about you, but I would have lead with the theft of the…
TerraCom notifies 150,000 Lifeline applicants after breach
Here’s a breach I didn’t see in the media but first learned of from the Wisconsin Office of Privacy Protection. According to that office, on April 26, 2013, TerraCom, a wireless learned of a security breach involving unauthorized access to personal data and downloaded files related to over 150,000 individuals. The data was stored on…