Hacker steals over 75% of South Carolina Social Security numbers

A foreign hacker has stolen 3.6 million Social Security numbers and 387,000 credit and debit card numbers from South Carolina’s Department of Revenue, putting most of the state’s 4.7 million residents at risk of identity theft.
Anyone who filed a South Carolina tax return in the past 14 years may have had their Social Security number stolen and has been urged by the state government to immediately enroll in consumer protection services, according to Greenville Online.
The hacker began accessing the Department of Revenue’s computer system in August, but wasn’t noticed by the Secret Service until October, giving him about two months to gather the data in what is one of the largest computer breaches in the US.
Since the first security breach, the hacker broke into the system again on Sept. 3 and Sept. 13, according to James Etter, director of the Department of Revenue. Etter claims the August intrusion yielded no stolen information.
“To the best of our knowledge, it was kind of a look-see, what’s here,” he said. “They were not doing anything with the data in August. They got in, ‘Now let’s see what we’ve got.’”
But the hacking was not detected by the Secret Service until Oct. 10, giving the hacker time to extract personal information from 3.6 million taxpayers.