Jacqueline Klimas reports: Hackers infiltrated the Pentagon food court’s computer system, compromising the bank data of an unknown number of employees. Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Defense Department spokesman, said on Tuesday that employees were notified that hackers may have stolen bank account information from people who paid for concessions at the Pentagon with a…
UK Tops European Data Breach Table
Phil Muncaster reports: The UK suffered the most data breaches in Europe during the first half of 2015, coming second globally only to the United States, according to new data from Gemalto. The digital security and SIM card vendor claimed in its latest Breach Level Index (BLI) report that there were 63 data breaches in the UK…
A quick note on the Heritage Foundation leak
As reported on this site, The Heritage Foundation leaked a ton of information about donors and others. In light of that, you may be wondering whether the FTC will go after them for unreasonable data security. The answer to that is probably “no,” because the FTC doesn’t have authority to enforce Section 5 when it…
WhatsApp security flaw could have hijacked users’ computers, just by knowing their phone numbers
Graham Cluley writes: We all know that the WhatsApp messaging service is available for smartphones – there are hundreds of millions of mobile users of the service. But some people want to have WhatsApp conversations on their desktop computer rather than their smartphone – and that’s why the Facebook-owned service has WhatsApp Web. From WhatsApp Web…
Russian hacker group exploits satellites to steal data, hide tracks
Ellen Nakashima reports: A group of sophisticated Russian-speaking hackers is exploiting commercial satellites to siphon sensitive data from diplomatic and military agencies in the United States and in Europe as well as to mask their location, a security firm said in a new report. The group, which some researchers refer to as Turla, after the…
License to connive: Boston still tracks vehicles, lies about it, and leaves sensitive resident data exposed
Kenneth Lipp reports: Prior to two weeks ago, when this reporter alerted authorities that they had exposed critical data, anyone online was able to freely access a City of Boston automated license plate reader (ALPR) system and to download dozens of sensitive files, including hundreds of thousands of motor vehicle records dating back to 2012. If…