In the biggest data compromise of the year, Social Security Numbers (SSN) belonging to about 3.6 million residents in South Carolina have been exposed in an intrusion into a computer at the state's Department of Revenue.

Another 387,000 credit and debit card numbers were also exposed in the September attack, the state Department of Revenue said in a statement Friday. However, out of that number only about 16,000 of the credit and debit cards were unencrypted, the department added. The SSNs, meanwhile, do not appear to have been encrypted.

Anyone who has filed a South Carolina tax since 1998 has been impacted by the breach and will be offered one year of identity protection service from Experian. The service includes a $1 million identity theft insurance policy. (The state department has set up a Web page with contact information for people to call.)

"The number of records breached requires an unprecedented, large-scale response by the Department of Revenue, the State of South Carolina and all our citizens," South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said in the statement. "We are taking immediate steps to protect the taxpayers of South Carolina, including providing one year of credit monitoring and identity protection to those affected."

The breach is easily the biggest involving Social Security Numbers this year. The previous biggest loss of SSNs this year happened when hackers believed to be operating out of East Europe broke into a Medicaid server at the Utah Department of Health in March and accessed closed to 280,000 SSNs and close to 500,000 other records involving less sensitive personal data.


It's too soon to say what kind of fallout this breach will have, especially considering the fact that the SSNs appear to have been stored in unencrypted fashion.

Security experts have long advocated the use of encryption to protect SSNs and other sensitive data and some states such as Massachusetts even mandate it. The fact that this basic precaution appears not to have been taken in this case could expose the state to potential lawsuits as well.


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232965/South_Carolina_breach_exposes_3.6M_SSNs?taxonomyId=17

another plus for the Obama chip?

yamakuza: another plus for the Obama chip?

Are you believing in the chip talks/things?

*omni:


Are you believing in the chip talks/things?

ya, the technology is available and the logic makes sense too