Posts from ‘December, 2009’

The Wall Street Journal has said that the FBI is probing a computer security breach targeting Citigroup. The breach has resulted in the theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers believed to be a Russian cyber gang.
Citigroup has denied this has happened, stating “any allegation that the FBI is working on a case [...]

President Barack Obama chose Howard Schmidt to be his cybersecurity chief on Tuesday.  Schmidt is a former eBay and Microsoft executive. His career includes 31 years in government, including a stint on President George W. Bush’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. He is currently CEO of the Information Security Forum.
Schmidt will be in charge of setting [...]

A hacker accessed a computer server for North Carolina Community Colleges that contained the personal information of nearly 51,000 people.  This included driver’s license and Social Security numbers.
College officials said Tuesday that they were notifying the 51,000 individuals from 25 campuses that they were victims of the security breach.
Officials said they discovered in August that [...]

On Tuesday a national data breach notification bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.  The Data Accountability and Trust Act (DATA), requires businesses to notify both customers and the Federal Trade Commission if sensitive information has been exposed to a security breach.
The law states that:
“Any person engaged in interstate commerce that owns or [...]

24,000 Notre Dame Employee’s Social Security numbers were exposed after the University accidentally placed the information in a publicly accessible location.
The data breach affected employees as well as students who work for the University.
Those affected by the data breach were informed by a letter and will also be provided access to credit monitoring services by [...]

According to Identity Theft Resource Center, government agencies and businesses reported 435 breaches as of November 17th.  More than 220 million records were exposed so far in 2009.  Here are the ten biggest data breaches by volume, according to the ITRC’s numbers:

Heartland Payment Systems - Records exposed: 130 million
National Archive and Records Agency - Records exposed: 76 [...]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is warning the public about false emails asking people to register for a CDC-sponsored mandatory vaccination program.Â
“Users that click on the email are at risk of having malicious code installed on their system,” according to the CDC announcement.
The fraudulent e-mails claim to be from the U.S. Centers for [...]