In just the latest in worldwide hacking schemes, a 23-year-old British hacker recently retrieved personal information from over eight million people within 18 months from January 1, 2010 to August 30, 2011.
Masterminded by Edward Pearson, the cyber attack occurred by leveraging two Trojans on top of Pearson’s home written code, which gained access to credit card details, passwords, dates of birth, names and addresses.
A majority of this information was stolen from 200,000 PayPal (News - Alert) accounts or directly taken from Nokia’s internal network where Pearson worked to attain the confidential information of 8,000 staff members, subsequently forcing the network to shut down for two weeks. Data from employees of AOL (News - Alert) were also compromised.
According to a recent report, if the all the stolen information found on Pearson’s computer would have been printed out, it would have filled up almost 70,000 pieces of paper.
How was this cyber-criminal finally brought to justice? Only after his girlfriend made hotel reservations for a relaxing vacation—using the stolen information, of course.
The hacker’s attorney, Andrew Bodnar, said Pearson’s plan could be attributed to an “intellectual challenge” rather than to make money.
“This is a young man who has very advanced computer skills, but has put them to the wrong use, but he is not the criminal mastermind that everyone claims he is,” Bodnar added.
Judge Ann Mulligan said during the case, “Your computers and software were a devastating tool kit. You had a staggering amount of personal details.”
It appears the judge didn’t really care what the motive for his madness was, as Pearson was sentenced to just over two years.
Thankfully, a solution such as a password manager can halt these types of invasion of privacy by enabling IT managers to utilize a server-based program for control over the administrative panel that manages deployment. Different departments can share records securely, as one employee can update a record and everyone else in the department will then have access to the update in a highly safe environment.
Furthermore, when implementing a password manager solution, companies can: significantly increase employee productivity as passwords are no longer forgotten or misplaced; decrease IT costs as calls regarding lost or stolen passwords are reduced; offer better collaboration among departments or cross-functional teams as passwords and other records are more easily shared; improve compliance with government regulation regarding data protection and security; and decrease risks of data loss from attacks based on compromised passwords.
Edited by Rich Steeves