South Carolina Department of Revenue Hacked, 3.6 Million SSNs Taken 112
New submitter Escape From NY writes "3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers were stolen from the SC Department of Revenue. Most of the credit and debit card numbers were encrypted — all but about 16,000. There were several different attacks, all of which originated outside the country. The first they're aware of happened on August 27, and four more happened in September. Officials first learned of the breach on October 10, and the security holes were closed on October 20. This is still a developing story, but anyone who filed a SC state tax return since 1998 my be at risk. Governor Nikki Haley today signed an executive order (PDF) to beef up the state's IT security."
Love their response (Score:2, Informative)
No worries, every single citizen of South Carolina--just call this skeevy company that offered us free credit protection and give THEM your personal info too.
And also, the phone lines are busy. And the website doesn't actually work. And the offer is just a scam to try to try to get you on the hook for their "upgraded" service, which you'll never be able to cancel.
Sorry, you didn't expect the state to actually PAY to fix this mess did you?
Also, the Governor forgot to mention that one of her first acts in office was to order her agencies to cut their IT staff as much as possible (in hopes of creating a statewide Department of Administration that would answer only to her). What could possibly go wrong, huh?