Emil Berry reports on a recent breach that was originally described as affecting “tens of thousands” of people. Now it appears that the breach was much bigger: A file containing identifying information for every physician in the country contracted with a Blues-affiliated insurance plan was on a laptop computer stolen from a BlueCross BlueShield Assn….
Scam hits more e-mail accounts, MS blocks accounts
Jonathan Fildes reports: The scale of a phishing attack originally thought to be directed at Hotmail may be larger than previously thought. BBC News has seen a list of more than 20,000 more names and passwords that have been posted online. The list contains e-mail addresses and passwords from Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and others…
Anonymized genetic research data still carries privacy risks
John Timmer reports: Up until recently, looking for the changes in DNA that contribute to human genetic diseases was a laborious process that involved tracking the changes through the generations of individual families. The completion of the human genome has changed all of that, allowing researchers to check for hundreds of thousands of individual DNA…
Lawsuits over Heartland data breach folded into one
Jaikumar Vijayan reports: A lawsuit consolidating 16 separate class-action complaints brought by financial institutions against Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has been filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. […] The amended complaint includes for the first time several statements that Heartland is alleged to have made regarding the controls it had…
Lawsuit: Heartland Knew Data Security Standard was ‘Insufficient’
Linda McClasson reports: Months before announcing the Heartland Payment Systems (HPY) data breach, company CEO Robert Carr told industry analysts that the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was an insufficient protective measure. This is the contention of a new master complaint filed in the class action suit against Heartland, which in January…
Confirmed: Thousands of Hotmail passwords leaked online (updated)
Tom Warren reports: Neowin has received information regarding a possible Windows Live Hotmail “hack” or phishing scheme where password details of thousands of Hotmail accounts have been posted online. An anonymous user posted details of the accounts on October 1 at pastebin.com, a site commonly used by developers to share code snippets. The details have…