I’ve continued to add entities to my list of firms or entities where employee W-2 information was successfully phished by emails purporting to be from an entity’s executive. One notification I read this morning made me cringe because the firm that was successfully phished has contracts with the government involving mission critical systems for U.S. and coalition…
Category: U.S.
Vibrant Body Wellness notifies patients after burglar steals hardware with PHI
Seen on Vibrant Body Wellness: We were robbed! Literally. Yes, it’s sad but true — our office at Vibrant Body Wellness was broken into during the weekend of March 5th to March 8th. Things were stolen and no one was physically injured. We are grateful for that, and have been sorting through the violation and…
Is ransomware considered a health data breach under HIPAA?
Back in March, I blogged about the question as to whether a ransomware attack needed to be reported to HHS as a HIPAA breach. In that post, I quoted an HHS spokesperson who informed DataBreaches.net that a ransomware situation was an impermissible disclosure (because the attacker had access to the data even if the data weren’t…
MI: Former doctor’s office clerk sentenced for stealing patients’ identities
WZZM reports: A former doctor’s office billing clerk will spend time in prison for writing checks and applying for credit cards using information stolen from patients. Christine Ann Kroeze will spend between 4.5 and 14 years in prison on six felony convictions. Read more on WZZM. The accompanying video focuses on a sign that…
Goldcorp claims that there was an extortion attempt
Following up on my report on Daily Dot about Goldcorp being hacked and a lot of data being dumped, Bloomberg News now reports that Goldcorp’s CEO claims there was an extortion attempt. Obviously, I will be trying to follow up on this new development.
U.S. Steel Accuses China of Hacking
John W. Miller reports: U.S. Steel Corp. is alleging that Chinese government hackers stole proprietary methods for making lightweight steel on behalf of Chinese steel producers seeking to supply a bigger share of the U.S. auto-making market. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel, in a complaint filed on Tuesday with the International Trade Commission, said a computer belonging to a Pittsburgh researcher was hacked…