Emma Woollacott reports: Images of children in their bedrooms have been freely available on the web, following a security breach by webcam company Trendnet. The breach affects thousands of feeds, and was caused by an error in code introduced nearly two years ago. “It is Trendnet’s understanding that video from select Trendnet IP cameras may…
Follow-up: Spammers abusing DreamHost sites following January hack
Lucian Constantin reports a follow-up to a January breach involving DreamHost: The security breach suffered by DreamHost in January has resulted in hundreds of rogue PHP pages redirecting users to work-at-home scams, according to researchers from cloud security vendor Zscaler. Read more on ComputerworldUK.
Ca: Halton school board alerts parents after employee’s laptop with student data stolen
Kristin Rushowy reports: A laptop containing thousands of Halton students’ names, numbers and birthdates — even their standardized test scores — has been stolen, prompting the board to warn all parents of a possible privacy breach. “While we don’t believe data contained on the laptop to be damaging or harmful to student safety, we wanted…
Newly revealed incidents from HHS's breach tool
HHS recently updated its breach notification tool and added seven incidents that have not been previously reported on this blog. In the first incident, Robert S. Smith, M.D., Inc. of Georgia notified HHS that a laptop theft on October 17, 2011 affected 17,000 patients. In researching this incident, I found a breach notification: HIPAA Breach…
Hospitals mine – and aggregate – patient records in search of customers
Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News reports: When the oversized postcard arrived last August from Provena St. Joseph Medical Center promoting a lung cancer screening for current or former smokers over 55, Steven Boyd wondered how the hospital had found him. Boyd, 59, of Joliet, Ill., had smoked for decades, as had his wife, Karol….
More breaches caused by staff than hackers
From InfoSecurity: The 2012 data protection survey undertaken by the Irish Computer Society (ICS) shows that a higher number of data breaches are the result of internal failures and lack of awareness than are the result of external theft. The survey involved more than 300 Irish IT administration and management staff and was undertaken in…