Acxiom Hacking Details Made Public

pgrote writes "As mentioned previously, the Acxiom consumer database company was compromised. More details have emerged including the background of the alleged hacker and the method used to gather access. It turns out he had access since December of 2002 and came in through an unsecured FTP server. The suspect was not a former employee of Acxiom as previously reported, but an employee of data mining company."

Comments

Whenever someone says, "Trust me,"

[finallyHasANickname]

that is Clue Number One that you should not. What pisses me off is that it is darned difficult to deny the previous sentence. This damaged faith is not faith in humanity per se but of, um, I guess some abstract "Security Protocol Capability" or somesuch. I'm no let's-all-make-evil-obsolete Pollyana, but neither am I a moral solipsist (which would be an abstraction of opinion of the paranoiac?).

As a sort of rhetorical question "once and for all", what can be done? Jeeze. You know, governance was a pretty crude endeavor in the 18th century, and the radical liberals seem to have gotten it down pretty well. Some kind of system of checks and balances has to play a role in data security (Privacy with a capital P?) just as it has done well for more than two centuries in governance, right?

Re:Question

[Alien Being]

Then they must not have taken the appropriate precautions. They either used weak passwords, sent them in the clear at one time or ignored a brute force attack on the server. They were careless with their customer's data. I don't know if the kid had any malicious intent, but I'm glad he brought their problem into the light.