On February 28, 2011, Asu Pala, a 37 year-old New Hampshire man will be sentenced for his role in an international computer hacking conspiracy that earned him nearly $8 million. On April 21, 2010, Pala of Hudson, NH, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and five counts of failure to…
Hacker Blackmails Nintendo With Personal Data From 4,000 Gamers
Warren Riddle reports: Earlier this month, an unnamed hacker reportedly infiltrated a Nintendo 3DS promotional site and uncovered the names, e-mail addresses and postal codes of 4,000 Nintendo members. The assailant then allegedly blackmailed Nintendo because he believed “the firm had shown negligence in not securing the information more effectively.” According to Naked Security, Nintendo alerted the…
ME: Data breach affects Mainers’ bank and credit union accounts
Ken Christian reports: A data breach is affecting the bank accounts of what is potentially thousands of Mainers. John Murphy, President of the Maine Credit Union League told NEWS CENTER says the suspicious activity was noticed during the last several days. Murphy says members are seeing activity on their cards that were not purchases they…
Other incidents revealed by HHS breach tool today
Today’s update of HHS’s breach tool includes six breach reports, some of which we knew about already. Two of the incidents had been covered on my companion blog but not reported here as it was not clear that PHI were involved, but it seems that PHI must have been involved: The State of South Carolina Budget…
Baylor Health Care System notifies over 8,000 patients after portable ultrasound machine with PHI is stolen
Baylor Heart and Vascular Center in Texas reports that over 8,000 patients might have been affected by the theft of a portable ultrasound diagnostic machine. The device was stolen from a patient’s room in Baylor’s Jack and Jane Hamilton Heart and Vascular Hospital (BHVH) in Dallas on the evening of December 2 or the early…
Prescriptions and privacy
Kimberly Gray writes: Much has been made in the media of late [such as in The Journal’s Feb. 10 editorial “Mining your pill purchases”] of the concern of protecting privacy in the Information Age, but as we focus on developing the appropriate protocols, regulations and innovative privacy and security strategies, it does no one any…