In January 2013, a chap called Jonathan Moylan sent a single email that caused an AU$314m – £174m or $295m – dip in a coal company’s value.

The email was a fake press release stating that Whitehaven Coal’s bank, ANZ, had decided not to lend the mining firm the billion or so dollars needed to open a new pit.

Moylan’s message was sent from a domain that riffed on ANZ Bank’s name, used the bank’s logo and included the name of an ANZ Bank PR person and a phone number. That number was Moylan’s own, so when journalists called to confirm the details of the fake press release, Moylan simply told them it was all kosher.

ONE EMAIL costs mining company $300 MEEELION • The Register.

Think W3 Limited was hacked in December 2012 in an attack that relied on what the ICO described as "insecure" coding on the website of its subsidiary business, Essential Travel Ltd. The unidentified hacker behind the attack siphoned off a total of 1,163,996 credit and debit card records (431K current and 733K expired).

"Cardholder details had not been deleted since 2006 and there had been no security checks or reviews since the system had been installed," according to a subsequent investigation into the incident by data privacy watchdogs at the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Think W3 was found guilty of a "serious" breach of the DPA.

via Who has your credit card data? 1 million HOLIDAY-MAKERS' RECORDS exposed • The Register.

The European Central Bank (ECB) said on Thursday there had been a breach of the security protecting a database serving its public website. This led to the theft of email addresses and other contact data left by people registering for events at the ECB.

via ECB: ECB announces theft of contact information.

In an unbelievably sane move, the UK has accepted that piracy exists and that cutting people from the internet won’t work very well.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of music trade body the BPI, said VCAP was about “persuading the persuadable, such as parents who do not know what is going on with their net connection.”

He added: “VCAP is not about denying access to the internet. It’s about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice.”

Britain just decriminalised online game piracy | VG247.

the distributor (Source Interlink) decided to close its doors to magazine distribution after losing Time Inc.’s business. This caused us to scramble to find alternative methods of getting our magazine into stores around the world, a feat we accomplished without too much difficulty. But getting what was left of Source Interlink, now rebranded as “TEN: The Enthusiast Network,” to pay us for the two issues retailers paid them for, is proving much more difficult.

SOURCE INTERLINK CLOSURE AND REBRANDING PUTS 2600 IN LIMBO | 2600.