Complete DHS Report for
August 6, 2015
Daily Report
Top Stories
· Officials stated that about 2,665
hospitals were issued fines totaling approximately $40 million and 38 hospitals
in the U.S. will be docked 3 percent of its Medicare reimbursement for
readmitting too many patients. – Columbus Dispatch
9. August 5,
Columbus Dispatch – (National) Central Ohio hospitals fined for too many
readmissions of Medicare patients. The Federal government released findings
and announced that 38 hospitals in the U.S. will be docked 3 percent of its
Medicare reimbursement for readmitting too many patients. Regulators also
penalized about 2,665 hospitals nationwide with fines totaling approximately
$40 million for the readmission of patients.Source: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/08/04/readmission-penalties-for-hospitals.html
· An August 4 inspector general’s report
found several cybersecurity gaps in the U.S. Department of Labor’s information
security program. – Washington Examiner
11. August 4,
Washington Examiner – (National) Labor Department vulnerable to data breach. The
inspector general’s office released a report August 4 which found several
cybersecurity gaps in the U.S. Department of Labor’s information security
program, including serious control deficiencies in how the department handles
its personal identity verification (PIV) cards and related systems, as well as
a lack of a system to lock out individuals after multiple unsuccessful log-in
attempts, among other findings. The report stated that the department was made
aware of the findings and continues to work to address the issues.Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/labor-department-vulnerable-to-data-breach/article/2569530
· Crews reached 20 percent containment
August 4 of the 67,000-acre Rocky Fire that destroyed 24 homes and 26
outbuildings in Lake, Yolo, and Colusia counties in California. – CNN
12. August 4,
CNN – (California) Thousands abandon homes as California fires
spread. Crews reached 20 percent containment August 4 of the 67,000-acre
Rocky Fire that destroyed 24 homes and 26 outbuildings in Lake, Yolo, and
Colusia counties. Nearly 10,000 firefighters are continuing to battle the 22
wildfires in the State which have burned over 134,000 acres.Source: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/us/california-wildfires/
· Multiple carriers worked to restore
wireless and wireline services August 4 after a hardware-related network issue
caused a major outage in parts of the Southeast. – Louisville
Courier-Journal See
item 18 below in the Communications Sector
Financial Services Sector
3. August 4,
Miami Herald – (Florida) South Florida developers plundered money meant for
housing poor, U.S. says. Two officers at the Miami-based Carlisle
Development Group and 4 others were charged August 4 for allegedly stealing $36
million in U.S. tax credits from 14 government-subsidized low-income housing
projects in Miami-Dade County by inflating construction costs of rental
properties to secure higher tax credit amounts while receiving kickbacks from
contractors.Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article29949909.html
Information Technology Sector
16. August 5,
Securityweek – (International) Symantec patches critical vulnerabilities in
Endpoint Protection. Security researchers from Code White discovered 6
vulnerabilities in Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 12.1, including an
authentication bypass, 3 path traversals, a privilege escalation, multiple
structured query language (SQL) injections, and a high severity binary planting
flaw which could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary
commands on the SEP Manager (SEPM) server and on SEP clients running Microsoft
Windows. Symantec released a patch addressing the vulnerabilities and users are
urged to update their SEP installations. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/symantec-patches-critical-vulnerabilities-endpoint-protection
17. August 5,
Securityweek – (International) “Man-in-the-Cloud” attacks leverage storage
services to steal data. Findings from Imperva’s latest Hacker Intelligence
Initiative report revealed that attackers can abuse popular cloud storage
services for command and control (C&C) communications, endpoint hacking,
remote access, and data exfiltration via Man-in-the-Cloud (MITC) techniques in
which they access and decrypt stored user synchronization tokens. Source: http://www.securityweek.com/man-cloud-attacks-leverage-storage-services-steal-data
For another story, see item 11 above in Top Stories
Communications Sector
18. August 5,
Louisville Courier-Journal – (National) AT&T blames cellphone
outage on hardware. Multiple carriers worked to restore wireless and
wireline services August 4 after a hardware-related network issue caused a
major outage in parts of the Southeast, including areas in Indiana, Kentucky,
Alabama, and Tennessee. MetroSafe activated its emergency procedures to assist
police departments in Jefferson Counties and surrounding counties in Kentucky
that might have been affected by the outages. Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/08/05/hardware-blamed-cellphone-outage/31153921/