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McAfee Leaks Conference Attendees' Personal Info
Timmy writes "In the cruelest of ironies, e-mail security vendor McAfee has accidentally coughed up the personal details of some 1400 attendees of its recent security conference in Sydney, Australia. Those who were sent the list — attached as a spreadsheet to a thank you e-mail — are far from pleased that such an extraordinary thing could happen. McAfee, which sells products to 'stop sensitive and protected data from leaving the enterprise through email and web traffic' has blamed 'human error' for the blunder and is 'taking steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.' Doh!"
Title should say "attendees'", not "attendee's".
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
Things like this even happen to the best of us.
Further proof that no matter how good of a system we design, the universe will design a better idiot to use it.
You forgot to attach the spreadsheet to that post ;)
Irony indeed. This will certainly lose them a lot of customers. You have to wonder how good a security company can be if they could pull a boner like this one. It's going to take quite a while for them to recover from this.
However, I'm sure they will. Sony's rootkit never put them out of business, Jack in the Box is still selling hamburgers despite poisoning many of their customers (as well as a lot of other food sellers selling poisoned food), etc.
Free Martian Whores!
This is why I don't want my personal information in any database anywhere.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Dear Ms Morissette,
This is irony. Please take note.
Yours truly
McAfee's marketing department leaked it, because they were testing the old 'bad publicity is worse than no publicity' theory.
Results so far are not promising.
This is why I don't want my personal information in any database anywhere.
Good luck with that.
I'm not saying this would be impossible but it would be very difficult to achieve in todays world as you would have to live completly off the grid...
Think about it, how many databases have your personal info (or at least that of someone you live with). Any phone service (Cell or Land Line), Internet service, Electricity, Trash, Water, Natural Gas. These are all databases, and if you ever live on your own all of these will will include your personal info.
Also, do you have a drivers liscense? If you do your state government has your personal info (and thats if they didn't have it already).
Social Security (assuming your not a member of a religion that has contrary religous beliefs), congrats, the government has you on a list and, while this list doesn't directly include any personal information, what is the one thing that will get someone all the info they will ever want about you?
You wouldn't happen to own a car or house? Or do you live in an appartment with your name on the lease??
Do you have a job that pays other than cash?
Do you have a credit card?
These are just the lists that come to mind offhand, if I put my mind to it I'm sure I can think of more...
--- When you start with the conclusion that you want, then throw out any facts that don't agree, is it true?
Further proof that security is a human problem. Technology can help in some areas, and hinder in others, but at the end of the day it's the monkey at the keyboard banging out the works of Shakespeare that is the weak link in the chain.
Computers would be secure against viruses if people didn't open attachments or surf to dodgy sites. Phishing emails wouldn't work if people didn't reply to them, same goes for 419 scams.
Security is a human issue, it's not a technological issue and a purely technical solution will never work 100%.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Somewhat related, I work on an institutional review board that reviews human studies submissions for a large university. One main dichotomy that is used to classify protocols is the concept of "minimal risk" vs. "greater than minimal risk," minimal risk defined somewhat loosely as risks encountered in everyday life.
Accidental sharing of protected health information is considered a risk of many of these studies that collect sensitive information. We continue to subsequently review incidents in which protected health information has been "spilled," leaving us to determine if this was an "expected" or "unexpected" event.
Unfortunately, a la Ian Malcolm, I've come to believe that it is essentially guaranteed (thus expected) that these leaks will occur, making loss of confidentiality now just part of everyday life, therefore "minimal risk" from the point of view of the US federal regulations on human studies.
I actually READ TFA.
Turns out the summary was pretty accurate.
Just thought I'd mention that.
Every professional conference I've been do has provided an attendees list as part of the welcome kit (including the program, CD with papers/presentations, etc.). I get crap from vendors every once in a while. But not too much. Was this McAffee leaked information more than just contact info?
Does anyone remember the time McAfee distributed a signature file that caused its software to delete executable binaries from computers? This caused me and many other persons much grief. A few months afterward, a vendor asked me what McAfee could do to make up for such a thing. My response was that that they couldn't, that they should just go out of business.
Didn't this happen last year as well??