Access Control — News

Report: 'Foreign entity' hacked Obama, McCain PCs

Computer systems used by the election campaigns of both President-elect Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain were broken into earlier this year, and a large number of files related to the evolving policy positions of the two candidates were stolen, according to a story posted online Wednesday by Newsweek magazine.

Jaikumar Vijayan | 06 Nov | Read more

Best Western downplays data breach

Best Western International Monday acknowledged it suffered a data breach that exposed sensitive customer information at a European hotel, but strongly disputes claims that an attacker gained access to 8 million customer records with credit-card numbers. Best Western insists no more than a dozen customer records were compromised.

Ellen Messmer | 27 Aug | Read more

Sorting out the facts in the Terry Childs case

It's been nearly three weeks since Terry Childs was arrested on four counts of computer tampering and sent to jail on US$5 million bail. In those three weeks, this event has taken turns to the strange, and wound up firmly in the land of the absurd. From bombastic claims in the press to midnight visits by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to pages of functional usernames and passwords entered into the public record, this case has certainly proven engaging.

Paul Venezia | 31 Jul | Read more

Questions abound as San Francisco tries to repair network

IT managers and analysts are expressing surprise at the amount of time it appears to be taking officials at the City of San Francisco to regain full control of the city's FiberWAN network after a disgruntled network administrator allegedly locked access to it by resetting administrative passwords to its switches and routers.

Jaikumar Vijayan | 23 Jul | Read more

Insider threat looms as San Francisco crisis plays out

The unfolding cliffhanger in San Francisco this week -- in which a city network administrator has been arrested for allegedly holding the network hostage -- represents an extreme example of the insider threat that IT security vendors and others have been sounding the alarm about for years.

Ellen Messmer | 17 Jul | Read more