"Robert" == Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> writes:
Robert> COMPUTER THEFT, LOW-TECH STYLE Robert> A thief broke into a Visa International data processing center Robert> in California a couple of weeks ago and stole a personal Robert> computer containing information on about 314,000 credit card Robert> accounts, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Robert> Discover and Diners Club, says a Visa spokesman. Not a big surprise. As we build increasingly secure systems, we shift the weakest point of the entire system into the realm of physical access. Honestly, I'm surprised that we don't see this sort of thing more often. (Or maybe they're just going undetected.) After all, it is the weakest point at which a system will be attacked. Robert> Authorities speculate that the perpetrator was stolen for the Robert> resale value of the hardware, rather than the information it Robert> contained. Uh-huh. Wouldn't want to cause any kind of a panic among the masses, would we? Noooo, not when the perception of our super-secure credit card networks and other financial information infrastructure is at stake. (And Watergate was a simple bungled burglary, right?) -- Matt Curtin cmcurtin@research.megasoft.com Megasoft, Inc Chief Scientist http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/ I speak only for myself. Hacker Security Firewall Crypto PGP Privacy Unix Perl Java Internet Intranet