Free Republic

A former aide to Sen. Maggie Hassan and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is headed to prison Wednesday for what prosecutors said was the largest known data theft in Senate history. The former aide, Jackson Cosko, pleaded guilty in April to crimes related to an unparalleled effort to ransack a Senate office, extorting a Democratic senator, illegally harming Republicans for their political views, and blackmailing a witness. Prosecutors asked for nearly five years in prison for Cosko, a onetime congressional IT aide to Hassan. Cosko admitted he stole the New Hampshire Democrat’s data out of revenge for being fired, then used...

A former IT aide to New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan mounted an “extraordinarily extensive data-theft scheme” against the office, the culprit’s plea agreement states. The plot included the installation of tiny “keylogging” devices that picked up every keystroke. Between July and October 2018, former IT aide Jackson Cosko worked with an unnamed accomplice, a then-current Hassan employee, who repeatedly lent him a key that he used to enter the office at night and who allegedly tried to destroy evidence for him. Cosko accepted responsibility for the events revealed by federal prosecutors in court Friday. A statement of facts that...

On January 3, 2018, select DHS employees received notification letters that they may have been impacted by a privacy incident related to the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) Case Management System. The privacy incident did not stem from a cyber-attack by external actors, and the evidence indicates that affected individual’s personal information was not the primary target of the unauthorized unauthorized transfer of data. [SNIP] On May 10, 2017, as part of an ongoing criminal investigation being conducted by DHS OIG and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, DHS OIG discovered an unauthorized copy of its investigative case management system in...

It’s the most far-reaching scandal in Washington that no one wants to talk about: Tens of millions of federal employees had their personal information hacked as a result of Obama administration incompetence and political favoritism. Ethnic community organizer-turned-Office of Personnel Management head Katherine Archuleta recklessly eschewed basic cybersecurity in favor of politically correct “diversity” initiatives during her disastrous crony tenure. This Beltway business-as-usual created an irresistible opportunity for hackers to reach out and grab massive amounts of sensitive data — compromising everyone from rank-and-file government employees to CIA spies.

A second major cyber breach that might reveal far more personal and damaging information appears to have hit the U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The breach was apparently carried out by hackers with connections to China and targeted a database containing copies of the government's Standard Form 86, according to news reports citing unnamed government officials. The form, available online, is a 120-page questionnaire that's answered by people seeking a national security clearance.

Only a week after Russian "crime syndicates" hacked the IRS database and stole information on the tax returns of more than 100,000 people, China was blamed for "one of the largest thefts of government data ever seen," the Wall Street Journal reports. The data breach allowed Chinese hackers to steal the personal records of about four million people — all either government employees, contractors, or their families. The cyber-attack by Russian hackers is not the first of its kind. The New American reported last year that Russian hackers broke into networks at the White House, and in a separate cyber-attack...

An agency beset by corruption, incompetence and arrogance: An arrogant leader overseeing an agency with a vast level of power over millions of vulnerable taxpaying Americans is a toxic mix Apparently the arrogance of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen knows no bounds. Facing questions about the ease by which hackers accessed the tax returns of more than 100,000 Americans from February to mid-May, he remained unapologetic. “These are actually organized crime syndicates that not only we but everybody in the financial industry are dealing with,” he declared—before boasting about the agency’s ability to stop approximately half the attacks. Koskinen also offered...

In what could be one of the biggest data breaches in history, the federal government and authorities in several states are investigating the criminal sale of Social Security numbers, bank account data and other personal information for up to 200 million U.S. citizens.

Dear students, faculty, and staff of the University of Maryland (at College Park and Shady Grove): Last evening, I was notified by Brian Voss, Vice President of Information Technology, that the University of Maryland was the victim of a sophisticated computer security attack that exposed records containing personal information. I am truly sorry. Computer and data security are a very high priority of our University. A specific database of records maintained by our IT Division was breached yesterday. That database contained 309,079 records of faculty, staff, students and affiliated personnel from the College Park and Shady Grove campuses who have...

Google Inc. said an internal investigation has discovered that the roving vans the company uses to create its online mapping services were mistakenly collecting data about websites people were visiting over wireless networks. The Internet giant said it would stop collecting Wi-Fi data from its StreetView vans, which workers drive to capture street images and to locate Wi-Fi networks. The company said it would dispose of the data it had accidentally collected. *snip* "It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in...

Two men arrested after personal records, credit cards, checks, mail recovered at Twin Falls motel TWIN FALLS - Credit cards, checks, mail and medical records belonging to at least 100 Wood River Valley residents have been seized from a Twin Falls motel room. Drug paraphernalia also was seized. The arrests happened about 8 p.m. Thursday at Monterey Motor Inn, 433 Addison Ave. West. Lucas Busby, 27, of Twin Falls was charged with misdemeanor possession of paraphernalia and is free on a $300 bond. Cole Brodoski, age unknown, of Hailey, also was arrested but was released without charges. Twin Falls police...

LOS ANGELES — The University of California, Los Angeles alerted about 800,000 current and former students, faculty and staff on Tuesday that their names and certain personal information were exposed after a hacker broke into a campus computer system. It was one of the largest such breaches involving a U.S. higher education institution.

Beaumont Home Care is offering a reward for the recovery of a laptop computer stolen along with a Home Care nurse's vehicle Aug. 5 outside a home in Detroit. The vehicle was later recovered without the laptop. The computer, taken with the car from the 9300 block of Agnes Street near McClellan and Jefferson, contained personal and health information from Home Care patients served during the previous three years. "We have been working with the Detroit police in investigating the theft and attempting to recover the laptop," said Chris Hengstebeck, director of Security, Beaumont, Troy. "We deeply regret that the...

A worldwide study by CIO and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) reveals a digital landscape ablaze, with thousands of security leaders fighting the flames. But amid the uncertainty and crisis management, there’s an oasis of strategic thinking.

Hackers have broken into Sonoma State University's computer system, where they had access to the names and Social Security numbers of 61,709 people who either attended, applied, graduated or worked at the school from 1995 to 2002, university officials disclosed Monday.

<p>A thief has stolen the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of thousands of Wells Fargo customers nationwide after breaking into the office of an East Bay business consultant and swiping his computers.</p> <p>Wells Fargo is refusing to discuss details of the theft earlier this month or why the bank made such extensive information available to an outside contractor. Wells says the thief may not know that one of the stolen computers holds reams of proprietary data.</p>