Investment firm exposes data on Supreme Court justice, 2,000 others
An employee of McLean, Va.-based investment company, Wagner Resource Group, accidentally exposed the personal information of thousands of its clients through LimeWire, a peer-to-peer (P2P) network.What type of personal information? Names, Social Security numbers and birth dates.
How many victims? 2,000.
What happened? An employee's P2P software apparently was configured to allow the sharing of documents with other LimeWire users.
Details: Among the victims is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Tiversa, the P2P security company hired by Wagner to respond to the breach, determined that more than a dozen LimeWire users downloaded the files containing the confidential data.
Quote: "I didn't even know what peer-to-peer was. I do now." - Wagner Resource Group founder Phylyp Wagner.
Source: washingtonpost.com, The Washington Post, "Justice Breyer is Among Victims in Data Breach Caused by File Sharing," July 9.
