Stephanie Pagones reports: Monroe College is “under cyberattack” by hackers who demanded approximately $2 million in bitcoin, police and school officials said Thursday. The school’s computer programs were hacked around 6:45 a.m. Wednesday by a group that got in through ransomware and halted the system, cops said. The hackers sent a message demanding that the…
Category: U.S.
Premera Blue Cross pays states $10 million over data breach (Updated)
Associated Press reports: Premera Blue Cross, the largest health insurer in the Pacific Northwest, has agreed to pay $10 million to 30 states following an investigation into a data breach that exposed confidential information on more than 10 million people across the country. The settlement, negotiated with the Washington attorney general’s office and filed in…
Data breach exposes information of nearly 15,000 patients of LA County’s Department of Health Services, officials say
Pierce Singgih reports: The personal data of 14,591 L.A. County patients has been exposed in a hack of an L.A. County Department of Health Services contractor’s email, officials said Tuesday. An employee of the Nemadji Research Corporation, a contractor that identifies and verifies patient eligibility for programs that reimburse care provided by DHS, was hacked…
K12 Inc. Data Exposure Opens Doors to Students’ Personal Information
Alyson Klein reports: A K12 Inc. company database that included information for 19,000 students was available for anyone with an internet connection to see for at least a week, according to a report from Comparitech, which describes itself as a pro-consumer organization that offers security services. It’s not clear that anyone with ill intentions accessed…
VA: Arlington Investigating Cyber Attack on County Payroll System
ARLNow reports: (Updated at 5:20 p.m.) Arlington County has revealed a cyber attack that penetrated the county’s payroll system. In a statement, the county says a number of employees were impacted by the intrusion, but did not specify the exact number or impacts. The intrusion appears to be the result of a “phishing” email targeting…
DNA-testing service exposed thousands of customer records online
Nico Grant reports: DNA-testing service Vitagene Inc. left thousands of client health reports exposed online for years, the kind of incident that privacy advocates have warned about as gene testing has become increasingly popular. More than 3,000 user files remained accessible to the public on Amazon Web Services cloud-computer servers until July 1, when Vitagene…