An unpatched flaw in a “widely used security program” was exploited by an unknown hacker to gain access to a Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) database containing confidential information on more than 570,000 members of the state’s pension plans.

The intrusion occurred sometime between Feb. 21 and Feb. 23 and involved a hacker who used “sophisticated hacking tools” to break through several layers of security after accessing the server hosting the database via the software flaw, said Joyce Goldberg, a GTA spokeswoman. (more…)

Three Florida banks have had their Web sites compromised by hackers in an attack that security experts are calling the first of its type.

Earlier this month, attackers were able to hack servers run by the Internet service provider (ISP) that hosted the three banks’ Web sites. They then redirected traffic from the legitimate Web sites to a bogus server, designed to resemble the banking sites, according to Bob Breeden, special agent supervisor with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Computer Crime Center. (more…)

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has set up an e-mail address, phishing@irs.gov, that taxpayers can use to send in copies of suspicious e-mails they have received that claim to be from the IRS. (more…)

Seven months after purchasing e-mail hygiene service provider FrontBridge, Microsoft Monday repackaged the capabilities of the service under the name Exchange Hosted Services. (more…)