Hackers Block Animal Shelter Donations, Pose As Cute Syrian Rebels on Skype, and Bust Into HipChat

In case you missed our coverage this week in ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches:

UMass Memorial Ex-Employee Takes Off With Billing Data on Up To 14,000 Patients

The UMass Memorial Medical Group has learned a former staffer allegedly accessed private information that contained credit card and debit card numbers, Social Security numbers and birth dates.

Nonexistent ‘Women’ Chat Up Syrian Rebels on Skype

A hacker posing as an attractive female extracted detailed documents on Syrian rebel strategies by tricking a fighter into downloading infected photos of the female on Skype.

Malware Crippled Animal Shelter’s Donation Webpage for Weeks

Information technology workers at the Central Vermont Humane Society detected the intrusion over the holidays, which was part of a larger attack against WordPress-based websites.

Attackers Hack Professional Messaging Service HipChat

Intruders were able to compromise the business instant message app’s servers, as well as access names, usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords of a small percentage of its userbase.