If only the Brits had LifeLock
Like in the United States, the British are fond of using thumb drives for data storage and portability. But there’s at least one British worker must have learned a lesson about how dangerous they can be when his lost thumb drive was found in a pub parking lot a couple weeks ago.
On the USB device were the passwords and source codes for the British Department for Work and Pensions website used by 12 million of his countrymen for everything from making tax payments to paying parking tickets
If the site had been hacked using the source code on the lost thumb drive, the fraudster would have been able to access names, addresses, salaries, National Insurance numbers and credit card information.
A hacker would also have been able to divert tax money into private bank accounts, said Prevx employee Jacques Erasmus. Prevx is an Internet security firm.
Even though the data was password protected, Erasmus said it would be “relatively easy” to crack.
The 29-year-old information technology analyst worked for Atos Origin, a private company contracted to manage the government website.
Lost and stolen mobile data devices, including laptops, are responsible for most data breaches in the UK, according to a recent study sponsored by Symantec and PGP Corporation.
In the United States, nearly 250 million personal and financial records have been lost since January 2005. Twenty percent of US data breaches can be traced to lost or stolen laptops, PDAs, thumb drives and other portable devices.
Tags: data breach, LifeLock, thumb drives
