Saturday, September 06, 2008

You'd think crooks would have better ways to dispose of the evidence.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080905222721810

Kr: `GS Caltex Leaked Personal Data of 11 Mln Customers`

Saturday, September 06 2008 @ 05:27 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

And poof, within a week, yet a third breach that would make the Top 10 list.

Two multimedia discs containing the personal information of 11.1 million customers of GS Caltex, one of the nation`s largest oil refineries, was found on the street, police said yesterday.

Police have not yet confirmed any damage caused by the leak, but this is considered the country’s largest leak of its kind given the number of people involved.

.... The discs -- one DVD and a CD-Rom which are believed to have been thrown away -- were found early this month by an office worker in a backstreet’s trash pile near Gangnam subway station in Seoul.

The DVD contained 76 files in a folder named “GS Caltex,” including the names, social security numbers, addresses, cell phone numbers, email addresses and workplaces of customers sorted by age. The CD-Rom is believed to be a sample of the DVD as it contains only a few people’s personal data.

Source - The Dong-A Ilbo

[From the article:

“We have tentatively concluded that it is membership information collected for the bonus card issued by our company. The bonus card offers discounts for fill-ups, and is mainly issued by gas stations to compile customers’ personal information.” [Wow, what a relief! Bob]

... Experts say a GS Caltex employee likely stole the information for personal purposes given no signs of hacking and the anti-hacking system being intact.



Not sure what is going on here... Do we have another San Francisco type incident where an employee is taking control of sensitive data that the organization is not adequately protecting?

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080906055423925

NH: LGC employee arrested over missing data

Saturday, September 06 2008 @ 05:54 AM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews

The Concord police arrested a former Local Government Center employee yesterday, accusing her of removing computer backup tapes and manipulating computer information at the organization. Ruthanne Bradley, 46, was released yesterday on $25,000 personal recognizance bail and faces four Class A felony charges.

The Local Government Center - which administers benefit plans for public employees - maintains databases that include personal information for public employees throughout the state, including Social Security numbers and medical information, according to the police. The data in question had the potential to affect an estimated 190,000 current and former public employees, the police said.

There is a window of time - between 41½ hours and 60 hours - when law enforcement officials can't account for the whereabouts of the two backup tapes, said Concord Police Detective Mark Dumas of the computer crimes unit.

Source - Concord Monitor

Related - Boston Globe: NH Local Government Center worker arrested

[From the first article:

No victims have come forward thus far to say that their personal information has been used illegally, said Concord Police Lt. Keith Mitchell. [How would any victim know who to contact before the breach was disclosed? Bob]

[From the second article:

Last month, the center said the backup tapes were missing from the secured room where they are stored, then turned up in the building later. The center said an internal audit was conducted and it was found that there was no breach of personal data.

... Police, who have been investigating the matter since Aug. 6, said they couldn't definitively ascertain if the backup tapes had ever been compromised or left the building.



If I read this correctly, they kept the data online even when there was no longer a business need for it.

http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080905124032744

Jp: Cyber-attacks leak info on Hotta customers

Friday, September 05 2008 @ 12:40 PM EDT
Contributed by: PrivacyNews

The personal data of as many as 18,000 customers have been compromised after the server of Tokyo-based pet supply firm Hotta was accessed by a hacker in China, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

The company confirmed there have been at least 30 incidents of phishing for personal data and its fraudulent use. The company also said they filed a police report last month.

According to a Hotta spokesman, between January 2004 and May 2007, about 18,000 customers entered their personal details, such as name, address and e-mail address, on the company's Web site to join a membership plan for buying products off the company's Dog One Life Web site. About 4,800 customers also included credit card information.

Source - Daily Yomiuri Online

[From the article:

The company continued operating the server even after online sales activities were ended in late May last year. This June, however, the company began receiving notices from credit card companies regarding possible information theft.



Can you remember the world without Google?

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/05/1944214&from=rss

Google Turns 10

Posted by CmdrTaco on Friday September 05, @04:53PM from the we'll-always-be-older-and-poorer dept. Google

Ian Lamont writes

"It was on September 7, 1998 that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google Inc., aiming to provide a better search engine. You can see what it looked like here. Google had a relatively good search engine technology that succeeded in burying many late 1990s competitors, and it eventually developed a successful advertising model and pledged to "do no evil." The company now has nearly 20,000 employees and a $150 billion market value, and has been acquiring or developing a host of groundbreaking technologies. When did you start using its search engine? Is the world a better place because of Google?"



When I assigned them a project to secure a Cloud based application, my students thought I was nuts. (Now of course they know I'm nuts.)

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/05/Appirio-abandons-servers-and-heads-for-the-cloud_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/05/Appirio-abandons-servers-and-heads-for-the-cloud_1.html

Appirio opts for the cloud over servers

The company's 100-person operation relies on cloud-based, on-demand software from Google and Salesforce.com

By Paul Krill September 05, 2008

Can a business be run solely in the cloud without a server anywhere in sight? Appirio says it can and is already doing it.

Starting out with four people two years ago and growing to nearly 100 employees, the company relies on cloud-based, on-demand software from Google and Salesforce.com, said Narinder Singh, founder and chief marketing officer at Appirio.

... Annual IT costs per employee for hardware and software at Appirio are less than $1,000, as opposed to the $6,000 to $12,000 per employee that was spent at SAP when Singh worked there, he stressed.



Good article with some interesting citations

http://www.slate.com/id/2199368

Why Is the Internet So Infuriatingly Slow?

Plus, two horrible things your Internet service provider wants to do to make it speedier.

By Chris Wilson Posted Friday, Sept. 5, 2008, at 7:45 AM ET


Related

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080904-martin-responds-to-comcast-lawsuit-we-still-want-answers.html

Martin responds to Comcast lawsuit: we still want answers

By Matthew Lasar Published: September 04, 2008 - 09:20PM CT

Federal Communications Commission Chair Kevin Martin said today that he was "disappointed" by Comcast's decision to sue the FCC over its move to sanction the company for P2P throttling. But Martin said he's glad that the cable giant says it will still comply with the Commission's Order requiring the company to reveal its Internet management policies, because the agency has lots of questions.

"Given Comcast's past failure to disclose its network management practices to its customers, it is important Comcast respond to the many still-unanswered questions about its new management techniques," Martin warned in a statement released this afternoon. Most notably, what exactly does Comcast mean when it says it will have a "protocol agnostic" management system in place by the end of the year?

And as for the bandwidth limits that Comcast has now announced: "How will consumers know if they are close to a limit?" Martin asked. "If a consumer exceeds a limit, is his traffic slowed? Is it terminated? Is his service turned off?"

Anticipating Comcast's arguments that the FCC has no jurisdiction to sanction its behavior, Martin reminded the company that when the FCC approved it and Time-Warners' acquisition of Adelphia Communications in July of 2006, the FCC "put Comcast on notice" that it would act on complaints of degraded Internet content. "Comcast nonetheless chose to close on that deal," Martin noted.

... While Free Press's Ben Scott also calls Comcast's actions "predictable," his comments concur that Capitol Hill has to address the problem. "The future of the Internet is too important to let Comcast tie it up in legal limbo," Scott said. "Congress should act now to pass net neutrality laws that clear up any uncertainty once and for all."



Is this viable? (I did find a lawyer I know in the Litigation Practice Group at Holme Roberts & Owen easily enough...)

http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/feefiefoefirm-com-find-law-firms

FeeFieFoeFirm.com - Find Law Firms

http://www.feefiefoefirm.com

Are you looking for legal help? If you are, then you should start looking through Feefiefoefirm.com. With this legal search engine, you’ll be able to find a law firm in your area willing to help you out in your court case. You’ll be able to read many court profiles, see what services they excel in, and many other things that are sure to help you in deciding whether or not you want to hire a law firm’s services. If you own a law firm, you’ll be able to submit your site to them. This will make it easier for you to get costumers, as you’ll have place where you can get free exposure. While sites like this abound, this one has a great search engine and since you can search for law firms outside of the US, it covers a lot more territory.

No comments: