The Spring Round-up of Cyber Assaults

Somehow smart thieves have always been able to create chaos in society, at least for awhile. Unfortunately, that “while” seems to have hit its peak in the merry month of May. We’ve seen horrid security breaches at some pretty big outfits.

Actually, to back up a trifle, the trend got off to a running start on April 3, with the breach of Epsilon’s email marketing files.

The ultimate "flip you" may have occurred at LastPass, an operation that stores passwords.

Sony joined the hit list on April 3, when hackers organized a bludgeoning from which the beleagued Japanese PlayStation manufacturer is still recovering. Overall, personal details of some 80,000 registered users were compromised.

On May 9, thieves stole debit card information from Michaels' customers in Chicago.

A few days later, on May 11, reports spread that information about 500 million Facebook users might have been leaked to advertisers. Can information really get “leaked to advertisers”? Hmmm....

Even reality TV hasn’t been immune. Some 250,000 applicants to the U.K.’s X-Factor TV series had their personal details stolen from Fox Networks computer system in early May.

And please, let’s not go back to the somber month of March, when RSA, an IT security vendor, sniffed out an extremely sophisticated attack aimed at its SecurID two-factor authentication products. The executive chairman of RSA says an investigation led officials to believe the attack falls under the category of an “advanced persistent threat.” Wow.

Because some of “those people” who hold our personal information have been slow to tell us we’ve been compromised, U.S. senators John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and four colleagues called on the SEC to bolster data breach disclosure requirements

If you want to keep up with the breaches, you can watch Experian’s rolling “breach” newsfeed here or follow the Twitter hashtag, #databreach. Consume with Ambien and baby aspirin. Nitey Nite.

-- scrubbed by Marketing Brillo