Walt Buteau reports: A computer system safeguard that the Pinellas County School District was paying for unknowingly lapsed this year, allowing a 17-year-old student to access and disrupt the district’s system, according to school officials. According to a St. Petersburg police arrest affidavit, the high school student allegedly broke into the district computer network March…
Category: U.S.
Russian SolarWinds hackers launch email attack on government agencies
Nobelium launched the attacks after getting access to an email marketing service used by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, according to Microsoft. Guardian staff and agencies report: The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and thinktanks this…
Philly data breach that impacted health employee emails also hit other departments
Emily Scott reports: The City of Philadelphia has released an update on an investigation into a data breach that left some employee email accounts accessible to unauthorized individuals. The incident, initially identified in March 2020, was the result of an employee’s email account that was exposed due to a phishing attack. The breach impacted people receiving services…
Colonial Pipeline Accused of Negligence in Proposed Class Action
Jake Holland reports: Colonial Pipeline Co. and its owners acted negligently by employing lax cybersecurity standards that left the company vulnerable to a massive ransomware attack, a proposed Georgia federal court class action alleges. The company breached its duty to employ industry security standards, and that failure translated into system outages that harmed consumers by raising…
New Privacy Bill Provides Opt-Out Rights and New Data Security Requirements
Andrew Longhi, Jayne Ponder, and Libbie Canter of Covington & Burling write: To add to the growing list of federal privacy frameworks introduced this year, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has re-introduced the bipartisan Social Media Privacy Protection and Consumer Rights Act of 2021 (S. 1667). Senator Klobuchar introduced the bill originally in 2018 and 2019, although it did…
CEFCO Allegedly Victim of Data Theft
Jackson Lewis reports: Hackers have posted 42 gigabytes of data allegedly stolen from CEFCO Convenience Stores on a website known as Marketo. The website indicates the stolen data includes “agreements, financial data, account lists, budget reports, NDAs and other interesting documents,” according to the post attached to the file online. Read more on CSP.