A Seattle man has been arrested for allegedly
usingpeer-to-peer networksfor targeting
wealthy web users to conductidentity theft, according to a report
inThe
Seattle Times.
Gregory Kopiloff was arrested in Seattle, Washington, accused of
using the Limewire and Soulseek P2P networks to commit identity
theft.
Kopiloff was arrested last week on charges of mail fraud,
accessing a protected computer without authorisation and two counts
of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, he faces up to 29 years
in prison.
Geoff Sweeney, chief technical officer of behavioural analysis
software firm Tier-3, said, "Kopiloff's case acts as a stark
warning to peer-to-peer file sharers, as he is alleged to have
remotely scoured users' systems to look for income tax returns,
student financial-aid applications and credit reports.
"The fact that he appears to be have been able to cherry-pick
only those people earning more than £75,000 suggests he had a
wealth of user files to choose from."
File-sharing client software is frequently updated, and during
the update process it is relatively easy to accidentally allow
access to a PC's entire contents or an organisation's entire data
network, rather than just a few directories.