Data breach victim told to pay Adidas, National Basketball Association $US1.2m by US courts
Data breach victim told to pay Adidas, National Basketball Association $US1.2m by US courts
When Byron Bay woman Sarah Luke found out her personal details had been shared on the dark web, she never imagined it would lead to two US court actions and a million-dollar damages bill.
Ms Luke said the nightmare began after her information was compromised in the Medibank data breach.
She said this was the only breach of her information she was aware of.
Medibank released a statement to the ABC saying none of its customers' passwords were compromised in the breach, and it was therefore in no way connected to what unfolded for Ms Luke.
Ms Luke said hackers took control of her PayPal account, in a credential stuffing attack that affected 35,000 PayPal customers in December.
Credential stuffing is where hackers access an account by using automation to try out username and password pairs sourced from data leaks on various websites.
Ms Luke said over the course of two days from December 6 to 8, her PayPal account was used to make hundreds of fraudulent transactions.
She was then served electronically with papers from the US District Court of Florida outlining Adidas' case against her.
Similar charges against her were also filed by the National Basketball Association in the District Court of Illinois.
In both cases, Adidas and the NBA were given leave by the courts to run the cases ex parte — without a requirement for all parties in the case to be present.
In court documents seen by the ABC, default judgements were handed down by the US courts and damages were awarded against Ms Luke of $US200,000 ($293,000) in the NBA case and $US1million ($1.5 million) in the Adidas matter.
What in the holy fuck are these courts thinking
As a Australian woman, she did not present for Florida court. So the court defaulted judgment to the party that did
Yeah, she didn't present because she's not an idiot. And these lawyers and judges just did what they do best and fondled corporate balls, probably didn't even look at the evidence or make an effort to find the truth.
The only way I could see it making sense is if the courts thought that she lied. (they apparently held court without the defendant being present so presumably there was no defense)
For those who didn’t read the article and only this post and are a bit confused: her account was used to sell counterfeit goods and not used to make purchases. NBA/Adidas sued for IP infringement for selling the counterfeits.
Also she apparently didn't attend court, so the companies were awarded default judgments since there was no challenge.
She is a single parent with four children, living in an entirely different country on the other side of the world; it would have been pretty amazing if she actually showed up.
Obviously the solution is to centralize more of our data online, so if someone somehow gets access to it the reprocussions are even worse
I really hope the Australian government tells the Florida court to fuck right off
This whole thing is insane. It's hard to believe it could actually make it through the courts.
Wait... what?
WTF?
What the Florida