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Hackers in Md. breach accessed names, Social Security numbers of up to 78, 000 people
From: Destry Winant <destry () riskbasedsecurity com>
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2019 22:41:03 -0500
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/maryland-data-breach-accessed-up-to-78000-names-and-social-security-numbers/2019/07/05/a14c2760-9f41-11e9-85d6-5211733f92c7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.d28ec8db10ea Hackers illegally accessed the names and Social Security numbers of as many as 78,000 people whose information is housed in two older Maryland state databases, officials announced Friday. The breach happened in April and involved data collected from people who received unemployment benefits in 2012 or who sought a general equivalency diploma in 2009, 2010 or 2014. State officials on Friday began notifying people affected by the hack, after an investigation by state workers and an independent company found no evidence any information was downloaded from state servers. “It was just accessed,” said Fallon Pearre, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Labor. She said that the state does not believe any of the information was misused. The data had been stored either in an old unemployment insurance database or a database used for an adult literacy program run by the state labor department. The scope of the breach was much smaller than other recent cyberattacks in Maryland. In May, a ransomware attack crippled Baltimore, suspending many government functions and costing the cash-strapped city roughly $10 million. In 2014, a breach exposed 300,000 personal records of students and faculty and staff members at the University of Maryland. The state was among 21 whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers in advance of the 2016 election. And Bethesda-based Marriott International announced last fall that hackers accessed travel records for to 500 million guests, one of the largest data breaches in history. For the most recent hack of state databases, Maryland officials said the state will provide two years of free credit monitoring to people whose information was vulnerable.Last month, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) signed an executive order creating the state’s first chief information security officer and a new office dedicated to bolstering the state’s defenses. The state investigation of the hack of the labor department had been underway since April, but officials say the creation of the new cybersecurity post was not related to any particular incident. _______________________________________________ BreachExchange mailing list sponsored by Risk Based Security BreachExchange () lists riskbasedsecurity com If you wish to Edit your membership or Unsubscribe you can do so at the following link: https://lists.riskbasedsecurity.com/listinfo/breachexchange
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- Hackers in Md. breach accessed names, Social Security numbers of up to 78, 000 people Destry Winant (Jul 09)