Security Breaches

An extremely apologetic Bank of America representative called me the other day with the news that I had fallen victim to one of the hazards and vicissitudes of post-modern American life: the theft of one's Social Security number from the files of a major international corporation. BofA reported that my number, along with my name, address, telephone number and online banking ID, were all stored in a bank laptop stolen from a car in the Bay Area five weeks ago.

After being attacked by a hacker who stole 6.5 million of its passwords, LinkedIn is now being sued by one of its users for $5 million. The lawsuit was filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Northern California by an Illinois woman named Katie Szpyrka who in the lawsuit says LinkedIn failed to safeguard its users passwords. The lawsuit, which seeks class-action status, says LinkedIn did not meet its privacy policy, which states that the business social network protects its 160-million users' information with industry-standard protocols and technology.

Customer information collected by three companies, including McDonald's Corp. and Walgreen Co., has been compromised in recent days. The incidents highlight the vulnerability of that information, especially when consumers, overwhelmed with the number of online log-ins they need, use "dumb" passwords for their accounts, experts say. Recent breaches contained such information as names and e-mail addresses. They did not involve crucial personal information, such as Social Security, bank account and credit card numbers, the companies said.

LulzSec Reborn, a hacker group, has claimed to have obtained the credentials of 10,000 Twitter accounts after hacking a third-party app, but according to Twitter, all the accounts have remained secure. The group of hackers, which is based off the hacker group LulzSec that arose last summer, posted a note on PasteBin over the weekend saying it had posted the passowords and other credentials of Twitter accounts by hacking an app called TweetGif.  LulzSec Reborn, which has remained quiet since hacking MilitarySingles.com in March, posted a user table from the app. The table includes users' Twitter handles, passwords, actual names, locations, bios, avatars, the tokens they enter to activate the app and their last tweet as well, according to PCMag . But although the hackers posted the information and it remains online, Twitter says no security breaches have occurred, attributing the security to TweetGif's use of OAuth, which is a way to connect users' accounts to Twitter.

The U.S. military is expanding its probe of possible security breaches at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp following disclosures that two servicemen who worked at the maximum-security compound have been arrested on suspicion of espionage.

Two more security breaches involving classified data have been found at the Energy Department's beleaguered Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, government officials said Saturday. In the first, a pair of floppy computer disks containing sensitive nuclear information were missing for 24 hours last week before they were found attached to a paper report in another secured area, officials reported. The second breach involved an unlocked storage room door.

In the wake of data security breaches, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it would upgrade all of its computers with a new encryption technology. The agency has been struggling to restore credibility to its handling of sensitive data after the theft in May of a laptop and external drive containing the personal information of 26.5 million veterans.

A former Indian beauty queen at the center of a British sex and politics scandal has been on the island of Bali since the beginning of the week, immigration officials said today. Locals say 27-year-old Pamella Bordes, who has been working as a researcher at the House of Commons for a Conservative member, is in hiding near the hill town of Ubud.

The Transportation Security Administration labeled the drug-smuggling case at Los Angeles International Airport that came to light Wednesday as a "significant" breach in security . If so, there's a bigger problem than just the LAX case. Earlier this month, a former TSA officer admitted his role in a drug-smuggling scandal from 2010 to 2011 on the East Coast. The case is taking place in New Haven , Conn., and others involved have already pleaded guilty. Here's what the Hartford Courant reported on April 17 : "Three Transportation Security Administration officers, two police officers and more than a dozen drug dealers in Florida, New York and Connecticut are charged in the smuggling conspiracy that delivered illegal oxycodone pills from Florida to the Waterbury [Conn.]

NEW YORK -- A longtime Newark Liberty International Airport security worker pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of stealing the identity of a man slain 20 years ago to conceal his illegal immigration status -- a case that has embarrassed an airport already under scrutiny for security lapses. The man whom police identified as Bimbo Oyewole, but who had lived and worked as Jerry Thomas since 1992, had his first court hearing in Essex County, N.J., a day after his arrest. He pleaded not guilty to identity theft and was being held on $250,000 bail, according to the Associated Press.

NEW YORK -- Twenty years ago, a man named Jerry Thomas died in New York City -- murdered in Queens in a case that was never solved. Not long afterward, a man named Jerry Thomas began working at Newark's international airport. The second Jerry Thomas remained there until this week when police arrested him on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant who had lived and worked using the dead man's identity. The case has underscored concerns about security breaches at Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the country's busiest, despite what many say are Draconian measures put into place since 2001 to prevent security violations.

NEW YORK -- A longtime Newark Liberty International Airport security worker pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges of stealing the identity of a man slain 20 years ago to conceal his illegal immigration status -- a case that has embarrassed an airport already under scrutiny for security lapses. The man whom police identified as Bimbo Oyewole, but who had lived and worked as Jerry Thomas since 1992, had his first court hearing in Essex County, N.J., a day after his arrest. He pleaded not guilty to identity theft and was being held on $250,000 bail, according to the Associated Press.

The Transportation Security Administration labeled the drug-smuggling case at Los Angeles International Airport that came to light Wednesday as a "significant" breach in security . If so, there's a bigger problem than just the LAX case. Earlier this month, a former TSA officer admitted his role in a drug-smuggling scandal from 2010 to 2011 on the East Coast. The case is taking place in New Haven , Conn., and others involved have already pleaded guilty. Here's what the Hartford Courant reported on April 17 : "Three Transportation Security Administration officers, two police officers and more than a dozen drug dealers in Florida, New York and Connecticut are charged in the smuggling conspiracy that delivered illegal oxycodone pills from Florida to the Waterbury [Conn.]

As far as international diplomatic meetings go, the Summit of the Americas in the Colombian seaside city of Cartagena that concluded last weekend may not have produced any memorable initiatives or free-trade agreements, at least not as part of the official agenda. But unofficially, the summit managed to grab headlines after allegations surfaced that U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to pre-arrival security detail for President Obama may have engaged in misconduct, including hiring prostitutes.

Days after Visa and MasterCard reported that some data in their cardholder accounts may have been breached, an independent payment processing company announced that it had identified "unauthorized access" into its system and that "less than" 1.5 million credit card numbers had been taken. In a statement on its website Sunday night, Global Payments Inc. said cardholders' "names, addresses and Social Security numbers were not obtained by the criminals. " The security breach was confined to North America, the Atlanta-based company said, and it called the incident "contained.

Sam Greyson was surprised to receive a new credit card the other day from Bank of America. He was also surprised to learn that the bank had changed his account number because of a security breach involving another business. But the thing that surprised Greyson most was that when he called BofA to find out more about the breach, he was essentially told to pound sand. "They wouldn't tell us anything," he said. "They said we could read about it in the newspaper. " That would change if legislation now making its way through Sacramento becomes law. The bill from state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto)

Officials at a medium-security prison in the Sierra Nevada foothills have been chastised in a state report for security problems associated with the use of explosives on prison grounds. Security at a Sierra Conservation Center construction site was "generally casual," according to a draft report by the state inspector general's office.

MILITARY FRONT The United States has deployed a small number of ground troops in Afghanistan as part of a stepped-up effort to help opposition forces seeking to overthrow the Taliban regime, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld confirmed. ANTHRAX Anthrax infections in two East Coast women--the nation's 15th and 16th anthrax victims--with no known links to contaminated letters led some government officials to express concern that the disease might be spreading through general mail.

A congressional subcommittee has sent a letter to Sony Corp. seeking information about a security attack on PlayStation's online network by hackers last week. Addressed to Sony Chairman Kazuo Hirai, the letter requested answers to a detailed list of questions regarding the breach, which exposed the personal information and possibly credit card data of 77 million customer accounts. The letter, written by the House subcommittee on commerce, manufacturing and trading, addresses a number of security concerns, including when the breach occurred, how much data was stolen and why Sony waited a week before it notified customers.

The computer security breach in Sony Corp.'s online PlayStation Network and Qriocity music service last week struck a serious, though not fatal, blow to Chief Executive Howard Stringer's ambitions for a world of connected entertainment in which consumers can access and buy all manner of content through Sony devices, according to entertainment and security analysts. The attack, which exposed the personal information and possibly credit card data of 77 million customer accounts, was disclosed Tuesday, more than a week after the computer systems were breached.