The Sun warns thousands of readers exposed by data breach

Britain’s best-selling newspaper, The Sun, has warned that thousands of people who participated in competitions on its website might have had their personal information stolen.

Names, postal addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and email addresses are believed to be amongst the stolen information.

According to reports, the data was stolen at the same time as The Sun’s website was hacked earlier this month by the LulzSec gang, who posted a bogus story announcing the death of Rupert Murdoch.

Some of the private information about members of the public has been posted online, including applications for the Miss Scotland beauty contest, which includes details of potential contestants’ aspirations, vital statistics, hair and eye colour, weight, and height.

Rupert…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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