Matt Brennan reports: Aurora resident Joy Smith was shocked when she opened her mail a few days ago. She had received a letter from the Harrisburg Project, a data storage subcontractor who works with the Illinois State Board of Education. The letter said two laptops had been stolen from a van being used by Harrisburg…
Hacker LulzSec releases ‘grab bag’ of e-mail addresses, passwords – Writerspace confirms 12,000 are from their database
Hayley Tsukayama reports: Hacker group LulzSec released more than 62,000 e-mail addresses and passwords and encouraged its Twitter followers to try out the sign-in information at sites around the Internet. “These are random assortments from a collection, so don’t ask which site they’re from or how old they are, because we have no idea,” the…
San Jose federal grand jury indicts alleged computer hacker (updated)
Howard Mintz reports: A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted an alleged computer hacker who is accused of trying to extort $1 million from a Redwood City-based online company by stealing its private data and threatening to release it publicly. In a three-count indictment handed up in San Jose federal court, prosecutors allege Chetan Suresh…
Sony didn’t reveal all it knew in PlayStation case
Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. was aware in late April of the massive scale of the data breach involving its PlayStation Network services but only announced that some information may have been leaked, Kyodo News reported Thursday, citing a document released by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. […] The document dated May 6 contains…
Feds move toward health claims database despite privacy fears
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: Despite lingering privacy concerns, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is plowing ahead with plans to build a massive centralized database containing detailed healthcare claims information on millions of federal employees and their families. The agency on Wednesday released two formal notices in the Federal Register detailing plans for the new…
Everything Everywhere slams mandatory data breach notification law
Dan Worth reports: Mobile operator Everything Everywhere has criticised changes to UK law as part of the recent European ePrivacy Directive, which will force ISPs and telecoms firms to disclose any data breach incidents. The changes, which were brought in at the same time as new rules on cookies, will require service providers to inform…