File Sharing Causes Data Breach

SuprEme Court Justice One of the Victims

washingtonPost.com - Brian Krebs
July 9, 2008

Whilst using a company computer late last year, an employee of a McLean investment company decide to shop on line by trading possibly movies or music with others who use LimeWire a file sharing network. By doing so he unintentionally opened his company files, Wagner Resources Group, to the public domain.

About 2,000 of the company's clients, including Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and some high profile lawyers, had their names, social security numbers and dates of birth exposed. This breach was only discovered some six months later when a washingtonpost.com reader discovered the information whilst searching LimeWire.

LimeWire, known as a peer to peer network, allows users to trade music, digital movies and files with other users linking computers directly without the need of a central website. Unfortunately most users are unaware that the software that assists file sharing may be adapted to allow access to their documents. Data breaches in many cases take place outside of company's network firewalls usually because employees use company computers to install file sharing software.