U.S. CHARGES ALLEGED U.K. HACKER WITH DOE DATA BREACH

An alleged British hacker was arrested late last week in connection with a cyber security breach that occurred at the Department of Energy that put the personal information of tens of thousands of employees at risk. Lauri Love, 28, has been charged in a criminal complaint filed by the U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia’s office of with infiltrating computer systems at several U.S. agencies between October 2012 and August 2013. “Love and his conspirators gained unauthorized access to the protected computers by exploiting a known vulnerability in Adobe ColdFusion, a software program that is designed to build and administer websites and databases. The vulnerability, which has since been corrected, allowed Love and his conspirators to access protected areas of the victims’ computer servers without proper login credentials—in other words, to bypass security on the protected computers,” says a DOJ press release issued earlier this week. If convicted on the criminal complaint filed in Virginia, Love could face up to 10 years in prison.