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Hackers breached into the public website of The Washington state Administrative Officeof the Courts Last February and up to 60,000 Social Security numbers and 1 million driver’s license numbers may have been accessed during the data breach, Officials said Thursday.
According to the Officials they online confirmed 94 Social Security numbers which was confirmed that were compromised but for they also alerted in the Public about this as a precaution.


The broader information “just happened to be on a server in an area that was accessed,’’ said Veronica Diseth, director of the courts’ information-services division.

Adobe System software program, Cold Fusion was the main cause of this breach and on this 8 May the Vulnerability has been patched.

Officials also said that the hack happened sometime after September but wasn’t caught until February

Telephone and email messages were left for Adobe representatives seeking comment.

Mike Keeling, the Washington courts’ information-technology operations and maintenance manager, said officials were alerted to the breach by a business on the East Coast that had a similar intrusion.

“They recognized our information in their breach log,’’ Keeling said, which led them to install the patch provided by Adobe and start an investigation.

When court officials were first alerted to the breach, they believed all of the information accessed was public record, and didn’t think confidential information was taken, but after an investigation by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the broader breach was confirmed last month, said courts spokeswoman Wendy Ferrell. Court officials said a law-enforcement agency also investigated the case but they declined to say which one. They said the investigation was concluded and there was no information on who might be to blame.

Keeling said he didn’t think the courts were a specific target.

“The hackers were probably opportunistic,’’ he said. “They were more than likely just fishing for data.’’

Ferrell said that once the breach was confirmed, it took additional time to go through the files and increase security to the website, which is why there was a lag in notifying the public. The 94 known names breached are being contacted by letter, she said. The rest of the people who are potentially affected come from a defined group:

• Those booked into a city or county jail within the state of Washington between September 2011 and December 2012 may have had their name and Social Security number accessed.

• Names and driver’s license numbers may have been obtained from people who received a DUI citation in Washington state between 1989 through 2011, had a traffic case in Washington filed or resolved in a district or municipal court between 2011 and 2012, or had a Superior Court criminal case in Washington state that was filed against them or resolved between 2011 and 2012.

Keeling acknowledged that confidential information should have been kept in a different area.

“I can say nothing more than it was an oversight on our part,’’ he said.

State officials have set up a website and hotline to answer public questions about the break:http://www.courts.wa.gov/databreach and 1-800-448-5584.

VIAseattletimes


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