Lookout, SC
Claymore sends us a link to an article about the South Carolina government losing about 77% of the state’s residents’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII);
“This is not a good day for South Carolina,” said Governor Nikki Haley. “South Carolina has come under attack by an international hacker.”
State officials revealed Friday that someone in a foreign country gained access to the South Carolina Department of Revenue’s web site and a server was breached for the first time in late August.
387,000 credit and debit card numbers and 3.6 million social security numbers, all unencrypted, have been exposed.
Of the credit cards, the vast majority are protected by strong encryption deemed sufficient under the demanding credit card industry standards to protect the data and cardholders, DOR officials said. However, approximately 16,000 were unencrypted and exposed.
Officials found out about the breach on October 10. On October 16, investigators uncovered two attempts to probe the system in early September, and later learned that a previous attempt was made on August 27.
Yeah, so if the SC government had your PII on their computers, it’s probably in the hands of criminals. And since it happened weeks ago and because the government is so slow to tell folks about their failings, y’all had better buy some protection. Like I’ve said here before, ever since the first breach of the VA, I’ve had Lifelock, because by the time the government tells you that they’ve lost your information, it’s too late.
Category: Breaking News
Yepper Jonn,
I have had it for 3 years now. I still worry, just not as much.
Why the heck would the State have credit card numbers?
There could be a breach of TPI as well…this will probably get a lot uglier as weeks go by.
@2 – People pay their taxes with credit cards so the state Dept of Revenue has them on file.
Claymore: bingo. Also, many states allow renewal of vehicle tags and/or payment of other license fees using credit cards.
Hmm-“Social Security cards printed from January 1946 until January 1972 expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number
It’s almost like those who were opposed to establishing this giant federal program were prescient or something. But bureaucracy metastasizes with completely predictable consequences and now individuals are left to suffer the results.
…We’ve been trying to get through to these geniuses since we heard about this and still can’t get to them (We’re in Columbia). Everything we’re reading says our data probably wasn’t compromised – they went after people who used CCs to pay their tax bills, and we never have. On the other hand, we’ve worked on the assumption that we can’t take any chances, so we’ve notified the bank and CC people along with a call to Equifax.
I hate these guys.
Mike