Police Officer Fired for Using File-Sharing Application

A Japanese police officer was fired after he installed a file-sharing application on his work computer that provided access to thousands of documents concerning secret investigations and criminal information. The policeman, whose name was not disclosed, installed the Winny file-sharing peer to peer program on his office computer that automatically shared no less than 6600 police documents with all the users of the program. Security company Sophos sustained that approximately 12,000 persons involved in criminal investigations were mentioned in the documents including detailed information concerning 400 members of Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza, very dangerous criminal gang.

The superiors of the policeman might be also accused by the authorities but there is no official statement for this matter. However, it is extremely dangerous because valuable information about thousands of persons is now accessible to anybody and there is no way to stop the distribution of the information.

"The Japanese police force has taken a hard line against this officer for disobeying advice about not running peer-to-peer file-sharing software on his PC. The authorities have tried to enforce a ban following a number of similar embarrassing incidents in the past," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "But what this case really does is underline the importance for all businesses to better control their users' behavior, and what programs they run on their computers. Firms need to ask themselves if their employees have a legitimate requirement to run applications like P2P software, and if not control their usage through technology."

It was proved once again that a simple glitch, no matter if it is a software vulnerability or a human mistake, can lead to important trouble and there is no way to secure a computer unless you're a little bit paranoiac. So, if you want to assure a 100 percent protection of your computer, you should really check all the outgoing and incoming traffic as well as the opened ports and the software glitches.