Kevin Poulsen reports on 18 year-old Matthew Weigman, a blind telephone hacker: […] In his plea deal with prosecutors, Weigman, who was born blind, admitted to a long criminal resume (.pdf). Among other things, he confessed to conspiring with other telephone hooligans who made hundreds of false calls to police that sent armed SWAT teams…
Category: U.S.
OR: State loses 45 Social Security numbers in scam
Alexander Rich reports: An online scammer made off with 45 Social Security numbers after sending a virus to a computer at the Department of Human Services office in Coos Bay last week. The virus arrived in the form of a bogus e-mail with a link on it Jan. 23. When an employee clicked on the…
Ex-R.I. Hospital guard sentenced for patient ID thefts
Mike McKinney reports: A former Rhode Island Hospital security guard today was sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for stealing hospital patients’ identity information and opening cell phone and charge accounts at a Cranston RadioShack — with help from some store clerks. Michael Bermudez, 27, of Regent Avenue, Providence, received a 39-month…
P2P networks rife with sensitive health care data, researcher warns
Jaikumar Vijayan reports on the issue of p2p exposures compromising the security and privacy of health data: Eric Johnson didn’t have to break into a computer to gain access to a 1,718-page document containing Social Security numbers, dates of birth, insurance information, treatment codes and other health care data belonging to about 9,000 patients at…
FL: Caregiver arrested on fraud charge
A caregiver for an elderly woman in Largo is accused of stealing more than $2,500 from the woman’s credit card account. Victoria Fenton, 39, who worked for Visiting Angels elder care, was arrested Thursday morning. Largo police said she made five ATM withdrawals with her client’s credit card totaling $1,675. Fenton is also accused of…
K-STATE: K-State Identifies Computer Security Lapse
Kansas State University is notifying 45 students who were enrolled in an agricultural economics class in spring 2001 that some personal information was inadvertently exposed on the Internet through a K-State departmental Web site. The students whose information was affected were enrolled in AGEC 490 “Computer Applications in Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness” during the spring…