Blackmailed Over Private Data
May 8th, 2009 by ComputerBob
Regular readers of this Journal know that I don’t trust any of my personal data to online services like Gmail.
And several times, they’ve seen me rant against stupid, insecure ideas like our government wanting to trust all of our private medical information to online service providers.
With all the risks that we already know about — identity theft, blackmail, fraud and spam to name a few — I would have expected people to realize that the rewards just aren’t worth the risks.
But governments are made up of people. Very self-assured people. The kind of people who always think they know what’s best for everyone else.
Know-it-alls.
Well, here’s one for the know-it-alls: “The FBI is on the trail of hackers who claim to have accessed the personal information of millions of Virginians. They’re holding the information hostage, and are threatening to dispurse the sensitive data on the Internet if they don’t receive a $10 million ransom.”
The story doesn’t say which operating system the hackers broke into to compromise everyone’s security.
That almost always means that it’s Windows, but if you find out for sure, please let me know.
UPDATE: Here’s another closely related story. “University of California, Berkeley, officials said Friday that hackers infiltrated restricted computer databases, putting at risk health and other personal information on 160,000 students, alumni and others.”
Again, the story doesn’t say which operating system the hackers broke into to compromise everyone’s security.
Permalink:
http://www.computerbob.com/wp/blackmailed-over-private-data.php
Tags:
Consumer Info, Cybercrime, Internet, Security