Florida Struck With Three Cyber Attacks in One Week
Florida is turning into a hotbed of identity theft and credit card fraud. According to CNET, this week brought news of three major security breaches in Florida that have put the personal information of tens of thousands of regular citizens in danger.First, Best Buy discovered that an employee at a West Palm Beach location may have been using a device to skim data off of credit cards as they were being swiped for purchases. The retail chain released an advisory saying that up to 4,000 customers' credit card numbers may have been compromised. Needless to say, customers who shopped at Best Buy in November and December should pay close attention to their credit card bills, just in case.
In an even larger breach, the credit card data of up to 21,000 customers at Wyndham Hotels in Florida was siphoned off the company's servers by hackers. The breach was discovered months after the fact, during a "routine administrative review" (though clearly the reviews aren't routine enough). This theft is serious enough that the state Attorney General Bill McCollum has stepped in to urge consumers to pay especially close attention to their credit card statements in the coming months.
But those breaches pale in comparison to the failure of security systems at the University of Florida, where the records of 97,000 students and employees were compromised. The university immediately took the systems offline upon learning of the break-in, but have yet to figure out what data -- if any -- was actually stolen, or how the hacker obtained access to the system.
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