A hack on the public website of the Washington state Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has led to the compromised sensitive data of individuals whose cases were making their way through the state court system.
How many victims? One million.
What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers.
What happened? The attack public website took place in February. An ensuing investigation led by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center confirmed the scale of the breach in April.
According to courts spokeswoman Wendy Ferrell, those affected by the incident either were booked into a city or county jail in the state between September 2011 and December 2012, received DUI citations between 1989 through 2011, had traffic cases filed between 2011 and 2012, or had a superior court criminal case filed against them or resolved between 2011 and 2012.
Thus far, court officials have confirmed that 94 Social Security numbers have been accessed. Once the breach was confirmed, increased security was added to the website.
What was the response? A website and hot line to answer questions related to the breach was set up. Ferrell has recommended that victims should monitor their credit.
Quote: “The AOC data beach is a sobering reminder for each and every branch and every level of government that protection, Washington state's CISO, said.
Source: www.komonews.com, Komo News, Associated Press “160,000 Soc. Security numbers exposed in court system hack,” May 9, 2013.
