Nigerian man charged in hacking of 108 LA county employee emails
It might not quite rival last week’s revelation that up to one billion Yahoo accounts had been hacked in 2013, but it’ll be news to anybody who contacted local government officials in Los Angeles. A Nigerian national has been charged with hacking LA county employee accounts that might have exposed personal data of up to 756,000 people. 37-year-old Kelvin Onaghinor has not been arrested and authorities are unsure whether he’s still in the US. They’re also searching for possible accomplices.
The hack resulted from the successful phishing of 108 county employees back in May, who provided names and passwords to their email accounts. The potential victims’ data was contained in messages sent to those workers. Due to their occupational responsibilities, those communications may have included personally-identifiable information from names and dates of birth to Social Security numbers and medical records.
As of last Friday when news broke, there was no evidence that confidential information had been released from the breach. Onaghinor still faces nine charges, including unauthorized computer access and identity theft. If convicted, he could serve 13 years in federal prison.
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