Huge personal data leak in Japan
The personal details of 66,000 subscribers to a Japanese national newspaper have leaked online via file sharing software. It is the latest in a long line of serious leaks in Japan, which have included sensitive military, police and medical records. The Mainichi Shimbun announced Thursday that information on about 66,000 subscribers has leaked onto the Internet via a new file-sharing application called Share. Share differs from the notorious filesharing application Winny but has similar functions. The developer of Winny was arrested in 2004. Share can be infected by computer viruses that cause it to transfer data from a local hard drive to the Internet.
The information taken from the major daily includes names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and e-mail addresses, but no financial information, the Mainichi said. The leak was discovered Wednesday by a special team of Mainichi reporters covering cybercrime and terrorism. According to the newspaper, an employee moved the data to his own computer, which had Share installed. His computer is then believed to have been infected with a virus, they said, adding that the exact date of the leak is still under investigation. Once the data is on either the Winny or Share networks, it is very difficult to remove. To aid anonymity, files are automatically uploaded and cached within the network. Simply removing the infected computer will have little impact, even if no other users deliberately download or share the data. This Asia is still a bit wild…
Source: Japan TimesÂ
Comments(2)
hahah too bad for them
could have happened to us too man….you wouldn’t be smiling then.