COMPUTER THEFT, LOW-TECH STYLE
--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: oldbear@tiac.net Date: Wed, 20 Nov 1996 11:12:35 -0500 To: rah@shipwright.com From: Somebody Subject: forwarded without comment Mime-Version: 1.0 COMPUTER THEFT, LOW-TECH STYLE A thief broke into a Visa International data processing center in California a couple of weeks ago and stole a personal computer containing information on about 314,000 credit card accounts, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and Diners Club, says a Visa spokesman. Some issuers, including Citibank, began calling customers last week and have issued new cards. Others are keeping quiet about the event and monitoring accounts for unusual activity. Authorities speculate that the perpetrator was stolen for the resale value of the hardware, rather than the information it contained. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/
"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
participants (2)
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C Matthew Curtin -
Robert Hettinga