Former HP chairman Patricia Dunn, who resigned after being enveloped by the pretexting scandal in which private investigators Dunn hired obtained the phone records of journalists and its own board on the sly in an effort stop leaks from the boardroom to the press, has died according to the Wall Street Journal.

She was 58 and apparently succumbed to the cancer that troubled her for at least the last 10 years.

The pretexting incidents, which involved the PIs claiming to be the phones' owners to get their billing records, also embroiled Mark Hurd, who was then a new CEO at HP, and led to a congressional inquiry with appearances by Hurd and Dunn.

Dunn was ultimately cleared of criminal charges brought by California attorney general Bill Lockyer.

Once a freelance journalist herself and eventually a director at HP, Dunn was CEO of Barclays Global Investors before taking the chair at HP in 2005.