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Oregon University Medical Data Breach Leaks Patients’ Social Security Numbers

Posted on Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 by

It’s a question worth asking your healthcare provider: are you doing the bare minimum to meet federal HIPAA standards or are you actually using common sense to protect my sensitive medical information?

That’s the concern after another data breach rocked Oregon Health & Science University. It reported on March 25 that a surgeon’s unencrypted laptop was stolen from a vacation rental home in Hawaii. The stolen laptop contained medical record numbers, types and dates of surgeries, names of surgeons of 4,022 patients, and (worst of all) the Social Security numbers for at least 17 confirmed patients.

Click to find out what other data breaches have rocked other healthcare facilities in 2013 — and why one security firm calls the low rate of hacking during the past few years merely “the calm before the storm” when it comes to our protected health information.

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Remember, Not All VPNs are Created Equal

Posted on Monday, October 8th, 2012 by

Most of us probably assume that if we are using a virtual private network (VPN) either at home or at the office, we are completely safe from hackers. After all, who can hack a supposedly encrypted network?

Well, it turns out that not all VPNs use the same technology, and some of this technology can be hacked by a new device called CloudCracker.

Is your VPN safe? Read on to find out more. Read More

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From BEAST to CRIME: Another Attack Exposes HTTPS Vulnerability

Posted on Monday, September 24th, 2012 by

You might remember how a few months ago we detailed how HTTPS (or secure web browsing) is not really as secure as it seems. Last fall, two security researchers demonstrated a program they called BEAST that allows hackers to gain access to restricted user accounts.

Well, the same researchers have found another vulnerability in HTTPS. And this one may be even worse than the first.

Why HTTPS Is Not Secure

But first, let’s provide a little background on HTTPS.

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Federal Judge Rules That Wifi Sniffing is Perfectly Legal

Posted on Monday, September 17th, 2012 by

You probably remember the famous court case last year in which Google was accused of wiretapping because its “street view” cars gathered fragments of Internet traffic from unencrypted wifi networks across the country.

This ruling seemed to indicate that anyone who “sniffed” or looked at unencrypted data on an open wifi network was committing the crime of wiretapping.

A federal judge in Illinois may have set a new precedent by ruling the exact opposite way in a recent court case. Read on for more startling details.

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Is Skype Spying On You?

Posted on Monday, July 30th, 2012 by

For many years, Skype took user privacy very seriously.

Skype, which provides free online calls and cheap phone calls to hundreds of millions of people around the world, has always been known for using strong encryption and complex peer-to-peer network connections. As a result, Skype calls are notoriously hard to intercept.

The company was very proud of its strong user security record, and even publicly stated that it could not conduct wiretaps because of its secure encryption techniques.

But this apparently is no longer the case. Read More

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2012: The Year of Massive Security Breaches

Posted on Monday, July 23rd, 2012 by

You might have noticed some disturbing security news last week: Yahoo reported that over 450,000 email usernames and passwords were stolen from the company’s databases by hackers and posted on the file-sharing account Pastebin.

Apparently Yahoo had stored these usernames and passwords without any encryption at all, making it very easy for hackers to steal them.

While having one’s email account hacked is bad enough, the news is actually worse than it sounds. Many of the hacked usernames and passwords were identical to those used in other website accounts, such as PayPal or online banking accounts. Read More

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WiFi in the Sky: Is Your Airline Inadvertently Risking Your Online Safety?

Posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 by

It’s a perk that is welcome by almost any traveler stuck for hours in a metal tube at 30,000 feet: wireless Internet!

For better or worse, wireless Internet service is almost everywhere.

Alaska Airlines, Virgin America, and Delta have already installed WiFi on its entire mainline fleet. American Airlines will install the service fully by the end of 2012. Same plans are in the works for JetBlue, Southwest, and Icelandair.

Online Safety Risks

With so many airlines offering — or planning to offer — wireless Internet service, are airline companies inadvertently risking their passengers’ safety? Read More

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From the Guardian to Chicago Sun-Times, Personal VPN Recommendations Keep Coming

Posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 by

We’ve heard from The Huffington Post, we’ve heard from The New York Times, but this latest recommendation to use a personal virtual private network (VPN) is definitely the best and most direct so far:

“Well, why are you sending data in clear text over open networks, anyway? You should never ever do that.”

So states the Chicago Sun-Times, the latest major media outlet to come out with an endorsement for a personal VPN like Private WiFi.

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Head’s Up, Mac Users: Apple Patches Major OS X Security Errors

Posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2012 by

Well, that was close. It seems that Apple — after scrambling to patch 36 major security vulnerabilities in Mac OS X — fixed big leaks that revealed passwords used to encrypt folders with an older version of FileVault.

Apple’s latest update to Mac OS X Lion allegedly contained an error that revealed the passwords for material stored in the first version of FileVault, the company’s encryption technology. Read More

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The Hacking Threat You Don’t Know About On NYC’s Subways

Posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 by

It’s not entirely free, but wireless Internet access is finally coming to NYC transit!

The wireless access is part of a gradual rollout, to be managed by Boingo, over the next five years at stations throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens.

One-click WiFi access (read: for a fee, probably $8 a month) will be available to Boingo subscribers on limited routes, as well as Boingo’s WiFi roaming partners, including Skype, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon (read: free access within your subscription plan).

But what this really means is that more than 1.6 billion annual subway riders who connect to the Internet using their smartphones, e-readers, tablets, and other wireless devices while waiting for a train are potentially compromising their identities and online security. Read More

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