Jeremy Kirk reports: Prague-based antivirus company Avast said Monday it took its community forum offline after a data breach, but payment information was not compromised. Usernames and nicknames, email addresses and encrypted passwords were obtained in an attack over the weekend, wrote Avast CEO Vince Steckler on a company blog. The attack affected less than 400,000 of…
White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan
Yes, this counts as an insider/human error breach: The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops. The White House recognized the mistake and quickly…
Vermont architects report identity theft
Eric Blaisdell reports: The head of the state’s chapter of the American Institute of Architects says around 40 Vermont architects just discovered they were all the victims of identity theft. Read more on Times Argus. Keep in mind that the AIA is a professional association, not the state licensing board, and the national AIA application…
Twenty south Florida residents charged In wire fraud scheme involving Verizon and AT&T customer data
Twenty individuals have been charged with varied counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. And from the description provided, it sounds like bad actors at Verizon and AT&T may have been part of the scheme, although I suppose it’s possible that they could have obtained account information some other way. According to the indictment, between…
Government Seeks Seven-Month Sentence – Time Served – for LulzSec Leader ‘Sabu’
Kim Zetter reports: As a reward for his extensive cooperation helping prosecutors hunt down his fellow hackers, the government is seeking time served for the long-awaited sentencing of top LulzSec leader Hector Xavier Monsegur, also known as “Sabu.” After delaying his sentencing for nearly three years, the government has asked a federal court to sentence…
Experian notifies consumers of a breach. Again.
Once again, Experian is notifying some consumers of a breach that resulted in their credit reports being accessed by criminals. The breach occurred on May 14. In this case, the client whose login credentials were compromised and used to access Experian’s database was the Bluegrass Community Federal Credit Union in Ashland, Kentucky. Experian and law enforcement…