Hacking News

Police Secrets Leaked on the Internet!

Through a malicious file that stole the information

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

4th of July 2007, 09:11 GMT

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The offline documents might be safer than the digitized ones

A police officer's computer was compromised after he installed a peer-to-peer file sharing application along with a malicious file that managed to steal the private information.

The Tokyo police department sustained that no less than 12.000 persons involved in criminal investigations were mentioned in the documents while approximately 6.600 private files were already stolen. Security company Sophos reported that the policeman installed a file sharing application called Winny that also contained a dangerous attachment able to share the info.

"How many more times will we hear stories of police forces in Japan leaking information about criminal investigations because they have not stopped their officers from installing file-sharing software?" said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.

It's not the first time when the authorities are affected by important data losses because several universities reported in the past that their student details were stolen by unidentified persons. However, it's very hard to find a solution to stop this kind of thefts unless you decide to install special applications to control the privileges of the users who can work on a certain system.

"All organizations can learn from these stories of data loss, and need to ensure that they are taking computer security seriously. If you allow your employees to put sensitive company data onto their own home computers, you are running the risk that they will not be as well defended as the PCs within your business. Organizations need to set and enforce policies as to what software their workers are allowed to run, or risk endangering data security," the Sophos representative added.

In this case, a security solution such as an antivirus or even a firewall could be very useful because the dangerous file could be detected and removed before anything dangerous happened. If you want to protect your computer, you can download one of the security tools listed on Softpedia using this link.

TAGS:

security | police | theft

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