Data Breaches

Did you know that the very first password attack happened in 1962? At that time, MIT’s CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) was the first to utilize passwords for granting individual access. Allen Scherr, a Ph.D. researcher, wanted to use the CTSS beyond his allocated weekly hours. In order to extend his usage time, he decided to borrow passwords from other people. Scherr managed to obtain all the passwords stored in the CTSS system by submitting a…

In a class action lawsuit, the American Bar Association (ABA) has been accused of “grossly fail[ing] to comply with security standards” and causing a data breach that affected approximately 1.5 million people. The data breach, which occurred in March 2023, saw a malicious actor gain access to the ABA’s systems and steal the data of approximately 1.4 million members. The data stolen included personal information such as name, phone number, address and email address. The…

DC Health Link, the provider of health insurance for those in the United States (US) Government, has suffered a data breach that affects over 50,000 people.  The breach, which took place on March 6, saw an unauthorized party gain access to the data of 56,415 current and past customers of DC Health Link, including 585 staff members and 17 members of the US Congress.  In a message sent to employees on March 8, the US…

Note: This article was updated on April 12, 2023, to reflect the fact that employee data, not customer data, was accessed during the cyber attack against Yum! Brands US fast-food corporation Yum! Brands, which owns franchises including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has suffered a data breach following a ransomware attack. The cyber attack, which took place on January 18, 2023, involved a malicious actor gaining unauthorized access to Yum! Brands’ network. The ransomware…

Australian financial services company, Latitude Financial, has suffered a large-scale data break that exposed the personal information for more than 14 million customers. The breach was initially discovered on March 16, but was originally thought to have affected a fraction of the customers actually impacted by the cyber attack. How did the Latitude Financial data breach happen? The data breach was initially reported by Latitude Financial on March 16, after unusual activity was detected on…

Part of the source code for social media site Twitter has been leaked via source code repository GitHub, according to a DMCA takedown request. The DMCA request stated that the code leaked included “proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools”. Following the DMCA request, the code was taken down. The source code was leaked by a user under the screen name ‘FreeSpeechEnthusiast’. It is unclear how long the source code was available for,…