The health department for the U.S. state of Illinois has confirmed that a years-long security lapse exposed the personal information of more than 700,000 state residents.
The Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) said in a statement on January 2 that an internal mapping website containing residents’ personal information, which officials used for assisting with the allocation of state resources, was inadvertently publicly viewable as far back as April 2021 through September 2025, when the security lapse was discovered. Officials said the exposed data included personal information on 672,616 individuals who are Medicaid and Medicare Savings Program recipients. The data included their addresses, case numbers, and demographic data — but not individuals’ names.
Read more…
Source: TechCrunch News
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- European court strikes down EU-US Privacy Shield user data exchange agreement as invalid
July 16, 2020
A crucial mechanism for transferring EU citizen data between the United States and Europe has been ruled as invalid in what could be a major blow to thousands of companies. Known as the EU-US Data Privacy Shield, the pact was designed for the exchange of data across country borders with high and legally-enforced data protection standards, ...
- More pre-installed malware has been found in budget US smartphones
July 9, 2020
Pre-installed malware has been discovered on another budget handset connected to Assurance Wireless by Virgin Mobile. Back in January, cybersecurity researchers from Malwarebytes discovered unremovable malware bundled with the Android operating systems on the Unimax (UMX) U686CL, a low-end handset sold by Assurance Wireless as part of the Lifeline Assistance program, a 1985 US initiative which subsidizes telephone services for ...
- German authorities seize ‘BlueLeaks’ server that hosted data on US cops
July 7, 2020
German authorities have seized today a web server that hosted BlueLeaks, a website that provided access to internal documents stolen from US police departments. The server belonged to DDoSecrets (Distributed Denial of Secrets), an activist group that published the files last month, in mid-June. The server seizure was announced today by investigative journalist Emma Best, one of ...
- IcedID Banker is Back, Adding Steganography, COVID-19 Theme
June 18, 2020
A new version of the IcedID banking trojan has debuted that notably embraces steganography – the practice of hiding code within images – in order to stealthily infect victims. It has also changed up its process for eavesdropping on victims’ web activity. Researchers at Juniper Threat Labs have uncovered an email spam campaign circulating in the ...
- US bank customers targeted in ongoing Qbot campaign
June 15, 2020
Security researchers at F5 Labs have spotted ongoing attacks using Qbot malware payloads to steal credentials from customers of dozens of US financial institutions. Qbot (also known as Qakbot, Pinkslipbot, and Quakbot) is a banking trojan with worm features used to steal banking credentials and financial data, as well as to log user keystrokes, deploy backdoors, and drop additional ...
- City of Knoxville shuts down network after ransomware attack
June 11, 2020
The City of Knoxville, Tennessee, was forced to shut down its entire computer network following a ransomware attack that took place overnight and targeted the city’s offices. Knoxville has a population of over 180,000, it’s Tennessee’s third-largest city after Nashville and Memphis, and it’s also part of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, with a reported population of almost 870,000 in 2015. Read ...