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2013 Year of Data Breaches Data Breach: The unintentional release of secure information to an untrusted environment. Many companies have suffered this year from data breaches. Weather information was accidentally published or the security system was hacked the victims in these cases reach the millions.
First half of 2013 showed us that technological advancements could make us even more vulnerable. Unfortunately despite all of the security measures companies take attackers will find away to penetrate defenses and access sensitive information.
Twitter Breach In February of this year twitter suffered a data breach where the information of over 250,000 users was exposed. Email addresses, passwords, and usernames where unprotected leading Twitter to switch to a twofactor authentication system to boost security and protect its users.
This past January a highly refined hacker targeted reporters at the New York Times in a breach that lasted months. The sophisticated attacker broke security firewalls to have access to the system. Once inside, they went on to utilize valid credentials to access the computers of 53 employees. Once firewall systems where breached, the attackers moved to a domain which contained all the passwords of every Times Employee.
Facebook A bug that was uncovered through the companies white hacker program, exposed the email address and telephone numbers of 6 million Facebook users this past June. Facebook said the issue stemmed from the way it generates friend recommendations and that no other user information was exposed.
Evernote The popular note-taking service had to reset the passwords of all of its 50 million users after it detected a massive network breach. The company commented explaining that its security team discovered suspicious activity which appeared to be a coordinated attempt to access its restricted systems.
Vendini The ticketed vendor Vendini detected an unauthorized intrusion into its systems back in April of this year, the company did not make the announcement until July (learn more in this Forbes article). The attacker obtained personal information such as names, phone numbers, passwords and even credit card numbers of thousands of the companies customers. As many as 30 organizations where affected such as the University of Michigan, Ashville Community Theater, and much more.
LivingSocial
The Livingsocial breach affected over 50 million people. Information like names, email addresses, and date of birth was exposed. The company went on to say that credit card was store in a separate payment processing system but never disclosed how it detected the attack in the first place.
Washington State court system As many as 1 million license numbers and over 160 thousand social security numbers where stolen this past March from a security breach of the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts website. Aside form the seriousness of the situation it also turned embarrassing for some individuals. The data that was stolen regarded individuals that had been booked into city or county jail or that had been issued DUI’s .
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