Bar: Data Theft

December 21, 2008 — 585

The Bar Council has been the victim of data theft, in this case it is literally a case of theft of a computers containing the data.

The theft occurred on 12th December 2008, in the Holburn Office of the Bar Council.

Despite the usual protestations of the data controllers, who were the victims of the data theft, the data does not appear to have been secured with Encryption

The data contains information about Barristers names and home addresses, which will probably be of some concern for barristers involved in prosecuting criminals, as that data is now in the hands of criminals (though they may not know that, or have the wherewithal to even access the data), but that will not provide much comfort to the Barristers involved!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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$350 per Card 15 million Cards

November 24, 2008 — 585

According to research published by Symantec, currently there are around 15 million stolen credit cards available for purchase on the “internet underground”, and the average amount stolen per credit card is $350.

From this Symantec have extrapolated out and calculated that there is around $5.3 billion of illegal “credit” available.

There  many of these 15 million credit cards will be closed down,by the owner/bank, before any money can be spent on them.

 

 

 

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More IT Threats?

November 23, 2008 — 585

According to the latest Internet Threat Report, it is predicted that 2009 will see an increase in politically motivated attacks such as attacks on Georgia.

This matches up with the reports by the US Congress and the attacks reported on NASA (both which blamed the Chinese for information warfare attacks).

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Data Theft: NASA

November 23, 2008 — 585

It has been revealed in 2008, that NASA was the victim of hackers in 2005, who, allegedly stole data about the shuttle

In April 2005 hackers accessed NASA’s famous space center in Florida – Kennedy Space Center .

During this time a program called “Stame.exe” was installed on the computers and collected information about the shuttle and sent it back to Taiwan, which has, of  course, close links to China (willingly or otherwise).

This news comes at the same time as news of the Congress report is into the dubious activities of China is released. Coincidence

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Data Theft: From the US by China

November 23, 2008 — 585

The US Congress has warned that US defence documentation, from contractors, have been stolen, by the Chinese.

This is a pretty big claim to make, but one that they have backed up over the years and they have not been subtle in the claim. The report available here, and down loaded here, makes several interesting claims including:

Page 162:“U.S. computer security authorities detected a series of cyber intrusions in 2002 into unclassified U.S. military, government, and government contractor Web sites and computer systems. This large-scale operation, code named Titan Rain by the U.S. government, was attributed to China.”

Page 164:“China has an active cyber espionage program” and “Many individuals are being trained in cyber operations at Chinese military academies”

Page 166: China’s strategists believe the United States is dependent on information technology and that this dependency constitutes an exploitable weakness”

Information warfare, coming to a cinema near you?

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$1 billion data theft – From Intel

November 23, 2008 — 585

It is alleged that highly secret technical documents were stolen from Intel, with a total value of $1 billion.

13 top secret Intel documents were down loaded by Pani Bishwwamohan, and Indian technical employee of Intel. These documents were accessed just before Pani joined Intel’s arch rival AMD.

The value of those documents, presumably in R&D time is put at $1billion.

At the first hearing Pani pleaded not guilty

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Data Theft: Express Scripts the next stage

November 14, 2008 — 585

The Express Scripts case rumbles on, with the latest twist being that the blackmailers have now sent letters to Express Scripts clients, presumably in respond to the 1 million dollar reward for their capture. The letters told the client them what information they [the blackmailers] will release.

Is this the tip of a rarely report iceberg? A case where a blackmailer who does this regular and normally gets paid has not and is getting annoyed with it. Or is this just an isolated case? Or could this be the start of a whole new crime wave, with the offender, police, and victims crimes being played out in the media for all to see, and learn from (good education for all involved)?

Which ever option it is, its surprising that its not in the main news papers. Hacking, Data Theft, Blackmail, Rewards, Its all there!

 

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Data Theft is more common…yet again

November 13, 2008 — 585

Another day, another report. Every month there is either a report about how common data loss or data theft is, or there is a report of an actual data loss or data theft. If nothing else, we know the reports are accurate!

What is depressing is that the people in charge of the data, the Data Guardians, are not taking any serious action to stop it.

The latest report, published in the UK shows that 88% of IT staff would consider stealing data. This report matches, very closely with the another survey reported in the BBC in 2004, when it was reported that 70% of people would consider steal data (perhaps the IT people feel more capable of taking the data).

This, once again, raises the issue of not what is lost, which is report (as it is a known variable, but what has been stolen?

The data theft statistics speak for themselves, there is a lot of it and nobody seems to be doing anything about it. So for every government data “loss”, you can bet your personal details, that some has been stolen.

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Data Theft: $1 million Reward

November 13, 2008 — 585

Following the blackmail attempt on Express Scripts, they have now offered a $1,000,000 reward to try and track down the blackmailers. An interesting turn in events. If its an inside job, somebody will talk for that much!

 

 

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Data Theft: Blackmail

November 10, 2008 — 585

The company Express Scripts has, reportedly had its data stolen and is now being blackmails for it.

Express Scripts, which is a US prescription management company, has received a letter threatening to release the records if it does not pay up.

The letter provided evidence of the data theft, by providing samples of records, which contain information about medical records, social security numbers, etc.

Rather than paying up Express Script has called the FBI, and set up an website to try and calm their clients.

The irony is that in 2006 the company pushed for greater use of electronic prescriptions, presumably for higher profits. Electronic data is so much easier to handle than paper so profits go up, as costs go down. Perhaps if the costs had gone up slightly, there would have been greater security of the data.

So far it has not been confirmed how the data was stolen/lost, i.e was it a hack or a data loss, as has happened so many times before. The companies FAQ on the subject states

“How did it happen?

We believe we have identified where the data involved in this situation was stored in our systems and have instituted enhanced controls. We are continuing our investigation to identify those responsible for any unauthorized access.”

Well, that’s nice and clear!

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