Hackers Steal IDs of Troubled DC Youths, Compromise Time Warner Cable Passwords & Deface Russian Minister’s Instagram

In case you missed our coverage this week in ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches: 

Ex-D.C. Juvenile Justice Employee Sold Identities of Youth Offenders

Marc Bell, 49, of Bowie, Maryland., worked from 2005 to 2013 at the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, where he became a key source for a $42 million ID-theft ring.

Bell pled guilty Jan. 5 to helping steal at least $2 million in federal income tax refunds by cribbing personal information on 645 youth offenders.

“Mr. Bell was a public servant who was trusted to serve the taxpayers of the District of Columbia,” said Thomas Jankowski, special agent in charge of the IRS’s Washington field office. “Aside from the terrible harm done to the government . . . Mr. Bell has caused immeasurable harm to the financial well-being of the youth whose identities he stole.”

In 2001, The Washington Post profiled Bell, then 34 and the director of a District-funded program by the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice to keep youths out of jail.

The Post reported at the time that Bell grew up in Southeast D.C., overcame a drug charge as a juvenile and earned degrees from Morgan State University and the University of Maryland. His mentoring program pulled more than 700 youths facing criminal charges­ out of detention and kept 85 percent of them from violating the terms of their release, according to The Post.

Ohio Tax Agency Lost Sensitive Data on 50,000 People

The Regional Income Tax Agency of Ohio has disclosed that nearly two months ago, it learned a backup DVD -- with personal information on thousands of taxpayers -- had gone missing.

The disc with the information cannot be located, according to a Dec. 31, 2015 agency press release.

The disc contained copies of income tax documents submitted on or before June 2012. The DVD may have contained names, addresses, Social Security numbers and dates of birth.

Agency attorney Amy Arrighi on Jan. 4 said the government waited to announce the information was missing until its investigation was complete.

“On Nov. 10, 2015, while in the process of preparing a limited number of DVDs for secure destruction, RITA discovered that one DVD case was empty and the DVD missing,” the agency said in a statement. “DVDs used to back up certain systems had been stored off-site at a third-party vendor’s secure facility, and were recalled by RITA to be securely destroyed. This action was being taken because RITA had moved to a new, more secure backup system, which made the DVDs obsolete.”

320,000 Time Warner Cable Customers Snared by Password Theft

The company does not yet know how the credentials were obtained, but there were no indications Time Warner’s own systems were hacked.

Time Warner said email and password details likely were collected through malware from phishing attacks or indirectly through data breaches at other firms that stored Time Warner Cable’s customer information.

A Time Warner Cable spokesman said the FBI recently notified the company some customers’ email addresses, including account passwords, “may have been compromised.”

The company said it is sending emails and snail mail to recommend customers update their email passwords.

Hacktivists Apparently Trounced Russian Minister’s Social Media

A hacker group purportedly representing Turkish activists blocked Russia Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov's Instagram account and displayed images of its own.

"The Börteçine Cyber Team" claimed responsibility for the attack, according to screenshots of the photo-sharing account, published by Russian and Turkish media and featuring Turkish flags, a portrait of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and a warplane.

Instagram later restored Nikiforov's account, but he complained the technical support team had not reacted to the incident for more than nine hours.

Russia's ties with Turkey slackened when a Turkish fighter shot down a Russian bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border in November, a move Russian President Putin described as "a stab in the back.”

(Image via Sean Pavone/Shutterstock.com)