Welcome To The Data Leak Lawyers Blog

Cyber-attacks increased by 300% in 2016

Top digital security provider Gemalto released a Breach Level Index (BLI) report on cyber-attacks and compromised data records in 2016. They found a total of 1,792 data breaches last year alone, leading to around 1.378 billion data records being illegally accessed.

Since 2013, over 7 billion data records have reportedly been stolen across the globe. And these are just the ones that have been reported. To break this number down, this equals to:

• 4,501,854 records lost or stolen every day
• 187,577 every hour
• 3,126 every minute
• 52 every second.

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Are large teaching hospitals more likely to have data breaches?

A new study finds that teaching hospitals are more likely to suffer from data leaks.

In a new study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers found that larger health care providers and teaching hospitals are more likely to have data breaches. At the John Hopkins Carey Business School, Assistant Professor Ge Bai identified that around 1,800 data breaches were reported in the last 7 years, and he found that, the larger the hospital, the more data breaches occur.
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Exam Board, AQA, reportedly compromised 64,000 examiners’ personal details

A school examining board has recently fallen victim to a mass data breach, compromising approximately 64,000 current and former examiners’ personal information.

AQA’s online systems were reportedly hacked on the 21^st March 2017. These online systems stored examiners’ name, addresses, personal phone numbers, and passwords. The examining board were quick to stress that the attacked systems didn’t store any financial details or any personal data of the schools, pupils or exam material.
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Data of 100,000 U.S. Student loan applicants hacked

Regulators have identified that up to 100,000 student loan applicants could have had their personal information stolen by hackers.

This comes after a “data retrieval tool” that allowed applicants to upload their tax information to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which was hacked by criminals. John Koskinen, head Commissioner for the IRS, has been investigating the ways in which the breach could have happened.
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RinGo Parking App Potentially Leaks 2,000 Customers Details

It’s almost impossible to avoid everyday news of another company being added to the long list of data breach perpetrators and here’s another one…

Parking app “RinGo” is the latest company to suffer a breach. The app supposedly removes the hassle of paying for parking, making it quick and easy without the need to queue.

After the company updated their app, hundreds of customers reportedly saw other people’s details when they tried to log into the app.
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95,000 McDonald’s applicants personal information hacked

Food for thought: McDonald’s is the next big corporation to fall victim to a major cyber-attack.

A McDonald’s Canadian unit said that 95,000 job applications were compromised from a cyber-attack that took place on the 31^st March. It’s believed that the cyber-attackers retrieved information such as names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and employment backgrounds from a careers website.

The users affected by the hack are said to be candidates who applied for jobs at one of Canadian branches between March 2014 and March 2017.
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Was the Russian intelligence service involved in the Yahoo hacking scandal?

Two Russian intelligence agents and two hackers have been formally accused of stealing more than 500 million U.S. Yahoo email accounts.

Officers of the FSB, the internal security of the Russian state, allegedly commissioned cyber-hackers to access Yahoo’s email network to steal half a billion accounts of ordinary users, as well as data for U.S. officials and CEO’s of large corporations.
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Huge hack affects thousands of NHS staff

Thousands of NHS staff in Wales have had their private information stolen after hackers accessed their details through an IT contractor’s server.

The private information included:

• Full names;
• Dates of Birth;
• National Insurance Numbers;
• Radiation doses.

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18.6 million documents leaked in the football industry

Data leaks have been on an upward trend in recent years. In what’s been described as an ‘Edward Snowden-type of leak’, the professional football industry became one of the latest victims of a data leak at the end of last year.

And with it being the football industry, it’s understandably big news, and has caused quite a stir!
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ThyssenKrupp’s trade secrets stolen in cyber-hack

One of the largest global steel manufacturers, ThyssenKrupp, has revealed that their company has been hit by cyber-hackers and may have had sensitive trade secrets stolen.

In February last year, cyber-hackers gained access to the German manufacturer’s computer system and managed to go undetected for three months. It wasn’t until April that ThyssenKrupp’s internal security team detected the hack. According to the manufacturer’s spokesperson, the management board was informed “at once” and he notes that the hack was detected quite quickly.
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