Personal data for a few bucks
p2pnet.net News:- Graduates in a Johns Hopkins University computer security course became mini-data-brokers over the last semester and proved that all it takes to pull all kinds of personal data online are, “a few dollars and some spare time”.
That’s the strength of a story in the New York Times which kicks off with, “Senator Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet had turned private lives into open books. So the senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.
" ‘I regret to say they were successful,’ the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.
“His staff, Mr. Stevens reported, had come back not just with digital breadcrumbs on the senator, but also with insights on his daughter’s rental property and some of the comings and goings of his son, a student in California. ‘For $65 they were told they could get my Social Security number,’ he said.”
The project was the brainchiild of Aviel D. Rubin, a professor of computer science and the technical director of the Information Security Institute at the university.
If his name seems familiar, he and another team of students recently cracked Texas Instruments RFID “immobilizer" systems used by millions of of Fords, Toyotas and Nissans.
"My expectations were that they would be able to find a lot of information, and in fact they did," he’s quoted as saying this time around.
The graduates managed to haul in, “well over a million records, with hundreds of thousands of individuals represented in each database,” says the NYT..
"Imagine what they could do if they had money and unlimited time," Dr. Rubin said.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
New York Times - Personal Data for the Taking, May 17, 2005
recently cracked – Vehicle security chips cracked, p2pnet, January 31, 2005
May 18th, 2005 at 10:42 pm
I posted a comment on the NYT article at a site where I discuss privacy, public records and access to information.
http://yourpinews.blogspot.com/
May 19th, 2005 at 4:05 pm
In Bay County, Florida, if you get a traffic ticket your name and address is automatically released to “Driver Improvement” schools. I did not sign any permission form giving the Bay County government authorization to release my name and address. I also wonder what other information about me was given away. Because of this blatant disregard for my privacy, I decided to fight the ticket rather than pay it. I am also thinking about finding grounds for a lawsuit against the county.
If I am unable to beat the ticket or successfully sue the county, then my next course of action may be to create a public database containing the personal information of county officials. I wonder how quickly the government will crack down on a website like this. Anyway, if I decide to do this, the website will be hosted in a country not controlled by the U.S. government or the cartels.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:41 pm
I like this person’s idea. As long as the “personal” information on the site is publicly available elswhere I don’t think the guv will be able to crack down on the site.