Wednesday, May 22, 2002

Ford Motor Credit office baffled by theft Apparently, someone was able to steal credit reports from Experian by masquerading as Ford Motor Credit. They don't know how, but it won't happen again. Very confidence inspiring... No further comment, just some excerpts: Officials still aren't sure who, or how, someone snatched 13,000 credit reports through Ford Motor Credit Co.'s Grand Rapids office." What they are sure about, however, is that no more credit reports will be stolen -- at least from this group. "We're not sure how this happened, to be honest," said Melinda Wilson, spokeswoman for Ford Motor Credit. "We thought we had a tight system. We're going to have an even tighter system now." The reports provided the intruders with a wealth of information, such as Social Security numbers, credit ratings, account numbers for bank accounts and credit cards, and creditors names and payment histories, Experian said. Full Story at http://www.mlive.com/business/grpress/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/business-0/102199233690053.xml (watch URL wrap). ["Dave Hansen" via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 09] 20:49 # G!

Credit-card data from wireless registers On May 1, MSNBC ran a story, "Best Buy closes wireless registers; Hackers say credit-card data vulnerable; other retailers at risk." It's still there at http://www.msnbc.com/news/746380.asp. But the story also says "An anonymous security researcher announced on a computer security research mailing list Wednesday that several U.S. retailers have made the mistake of installing wireless cash registers and transmitting the traffic in clear text, without encryption." So what's that other mailing list? Jim Laurenson, ICF Consulting, JLaurenson@ICFConsulting.com * http://www.ICFConsulting.com ["Laurenson, Jim" via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 09] 20:43 # G!