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Hackers, possibly from Asia, have stolen about a decade's worth of personal information on current and former UC-Berkeley students, the university announced Friday. The breaches involved records dating to 1999 at the school's health center that included Social Security numbers, health insurance information, immunization history and the names of treating physicians. No other treatment-related records were stolen, the university said, although self-reported medical histories of students who studied abroad were hacked. The school on Friday sent e-mails and letters to 160,000 people, including about 3,400 Mills College students who used or were eligible for University of California-Berkeley medical services. About 97,000 people are most at risk because their names and Social Security numbers could be connected by the hackers, said Steve Lustig, the university's associate vice chancellor for health and human services. "What's been taken is bits of data that the thief might put together into an identity," he said. The university traced the hackers back to Asia, possibly China, but the exact origin could not be pinpointed. UC and FBI investigators are probing the breaches, which apparently occurred over several months. An FBI spokesman said the agency was informed of the hacking immediately, but declined to provide more information. The thefts were discovered about a month ago, but system administrators did Advertisement not realize the breadth of the attack until April 21. The hackers disguised their work as routine operations and then left taunting messages for UC-Berkeley employees, said Shelton Waggener, the university's associate vice chancellor for information technology. The thieves accessed the information through the university Web site, he said. "You should think of it as a public building," Waggener said. "They got into the building properly, but then they broke into secure areas." Administrators at Mills College, which contracts with UC-Berkeley for

"As many as 68,000 members of CalOptima, the Medicaid plan for Orange County, California, may be at risk of identity theft and fraud after several CDs containing their personal information disappeared while in transit, the agency reported. "CalOptima's claims scanning vendor sent the electronic media devices to CalOptima through the U.S. Postal service by certified mail," the agency said. "On Tuesday, October 13, 2009, CalOptima discovered the apparent loss of the devices when the external packaging materials were delivered by the U.S. Postal Service without the box containing the devices." The missing discs include patient information such as names, addresses, Social Security numbers, diagnoses, and billing codes. CalOptima said it notified state and federal agencies of the breach on October 14, and posted an alert on its Web site on October 15."

In this new age of data protection, where most information is stored digitally and paper shredding is commonplace, you don't need to worry about private information ending up in the garbage, right? Steve Hunt shows that assumption is just plain wrong (includes video).

In a study that is unlikely to find favor among privacy advocates, researchers from two academic institutions warned that increased efforts to protect the privacy of health data will hamper the adoption of electronic medical records systems. The study, conducted by researchers at MIT and the University of Virginia, said EMR adoption is often slowest in states with strong regulations for safeguarding the privacy of medical records. On average, the number of hospitals deploying EMR systems was up to 30% lower in states where health care providers are forced to comply with strong privacy laws than it was in states with less stringent privacy requirements. That's because privacy rules often made it harder and more expensive for hospitals to exchange and transfer patient information, thereby reducing the value of an EMR system, the study found.

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A consumer reporting agency that failed to properly screen prospective customers and, as a result, sold at least 318 credit reports to identity thieves, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated federal law. Under the settlement, the company and its principal must ensure that they provide credit reports only to legitimate businesses for lawful purposes, use a comprehensive information security program, and obtain independent audits every other year for 20 years. The settlement also imposes a $500,000 penalty but suspends payment due to the defendants' inability to pay. According to the FTC, the defendants use sensitive financial data from other consumer reporting agencies to create reports that landlords use to assess potential renters. These reports contain consumers' names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, bank and credit card account numbers, credit histories, and other personal information. The Commission alleges that the company failed to properly screen new customers. The company allegedly requested only publicly-available information from applicants seeking credit reports, and it did not request supporting documentation to establish that an applicant was actually a landlord renting property. As a result, identity thieves posing as property owners were given an account with unlimited online access to credit reports, and the account was used to access at least 318 reports containing sensitive personal information. The FTC charged the defendants with violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by furnishing credit reports to persons who did not have a permissible purpose to obtain them, and by failing to maintain reasonable procedures to prevent such impermissible disclosures and to verify their customers' identities and how they intended to use the information. The agency also charged them with violating the FTC Act by failing to employ reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect sensitive consumer inform

Salesmen and parents know the technique well. It's called the takeaway, and as far as Keith Mularski is concerned, it's the reason he kept his job as administrator of online fraud site DarkMarket. DarkMarket was what's known as a "carder" site. Like an eBay for criminals, it was where identity thieves could buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, online identities and the tools to make fake credit cards. In late 2006, Mularski, who had risen through the ranks using the name Master Splynter, had just been made administrator of the site. Mularski not only had control over the technical data available there, but he had the power to make or break up-and-coming identity thieves by granting them access to the site. And not everybody was happy with the arrangement. A hacker named Iceman -- authorities say he was actually San Francisco resident Max Butler -- who ran a competing Web site, was saying that Mularski wasn't the Polish spammer he claimed to be. According to Iceman, Master Splynter was really an agent for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Iceman had some evidence to back up his claim but couldn't prove anything conclusively. At the time, every other administrator on the site was being accused of being a federal agent, and Iceman had credibility problems of his own. He had just hacked DarkMarket and three other carder forums in an aggressive play at seizing control of the entire black market for stolen credit card information. ....In the end they would regret that decision. Iceman was right

A defunct payment gateway has exposed as many as 19,000 credit card numbers, including up to 60 Australian numbers. The discovery by a local IT industry worker was made by mistake and appears to be caused by a known issue with the Google search engine, in which the pages of defunct web sites containing sensitive directories remain cached and available to anyone. The cached data, viewed by iTnews, includes 22,000 credit card numbers, including CVVs, expiry dates, names and addresses. Up to 19,000 of these numbers could be active. Most are customers in the US and Britain although some are Australian. The credit card numbers are for accounts held with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Solo, Switch, Delta and Maestro/Cirrus. Within the address bars of the cached pages are URLs of companies, including UK retailers of laboratory supplies, sports and health goods, apparel, photo imaging and clothing.