The website of Washington state Administrative Office of the Courts experienced a major data breach sometime between September and February. Up to 160,000 Social Security numbers and 1 million driver’s license numbers may have been access by the hackers during the breach. Officials confirmed on Thursday.
The officials were not aware of the data breach until it was alerted by a business on the East Coast that had a similar intrusion. Initially, the court officials believed that the hackers had accessed public records only, but an investigation found out that the data breach was major.
Court officials confirmed that 94 Social Security numbers obtained by the hackers for sure. They don’t believe that a larger number of citizen information was compromised, but decided to alert the public as a precautionary measure. Court spokesperson Wendy Ferrell said that the identified 94 citizens were contacted by mail about the incident.
Hackers used a bug in Adobe Systems’ ColdFusion software to hack into the Washington State Court website. However, Court officials said that the investigation into the matter found no information on who might be blamed. Adobe spokesperson Heather Edell noted in a written statement that the software bug has been resolved with an update.
According to reports, a law enforcement agency was involved in the investigations that uncovered the details of the data breach.
Source: Washington Post
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