About 32,000 people are being notified that their personal information may have been compromised after a breach at consumer data provider LexisNexis resulted in identity theft and credit fraud, the company has disclosed. According to the breach notification letter LexisNexis began sending on Friday, the thieves operated businesses that were former customers of data aggregator and credentialing service ChoicePoint, which was acquired last year by LexisNexis parent Reed Elsevier.
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Officials at the University of California at Berkeley on Friday began notifying students and the public that hackers had breached a healthcare database at the school, potentially gaining access to the personal information of up to 160,000 students dating back to 1999. Complicating matters: The breach is thought to have initially occurred months ago, on Oct. 9, 2008. Administrators said they didn’t notice it until April 9, 2009, however.
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Hackers are demanding $10 million to release some eight million patient records claimed to be in their control following the compromise of Virginia’s Prescription Monitoring Program (VPMP) website. Whistleblower site Wikileaks published a copy of the ransom note left by the hackers on the website, which is used by pharmacists to follow incidents of drug abuse. The note said the intruders possessed 8.3 million patient records and 35.6 million prescriptions. Also, the thieves said they created an encrypted backup of the data and deleted the original files.
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