Confidential data leaks are definitely not a joke, but some incidents are so funny that make us smile. This is a digest of ridiculous leaks prepared by InfoWatch Analytical Center as we approach the April Fools’ Day, one of the most unusual international holidays.
As part of a comical case of corporate espionage in India, Shreesha Rao, a computer-aided design and drafting (CADD) specialist for a company called New Generation, contacted another company, SBT Associates, which he thought was a competitor, offering to sell his employer’s confidential data. After SBT Associates agreed, Shreesha sent the data as an email attachment. However, he didn’t know that the company was actually a partner of his employer. CEO of SBT Associates immediately tipped off New Generation about the data leak, and the latter filed a complaint with the cyber crime police department, which soon arrested the criminal.
‘James Bond almost screwed up big time’ is what best describes an incident that happened in France, where a domestic intelligence agent wanted to text his colleague about a suspected radicalized Muslim, but accidentally sent the text right to his “target”. The suspect responded by saying how incompetent the agent was and then warned his contacts that they were being listened.
Kendell Bowden, a resident of North Carolina (USA), acted even more oddly. While out on bail after facing identity theft charges, he stole the personal information of yet another victim to get a credit card in their name, and then mistakenly texted this information to his probation officer. Not surprisingly, Bowden had to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.
The Cobalt, a well-known hacking group, made an epic failure by accidentally revealing the list of its targets in the finance sector. During one of their phishing activities, instead of adding the targets in the BCC field in the emails, the hackers wrongly specified their own targets in the To field. According to the security experts who made this discovery, the criminals targeted banks around the world, focusing on financial institutions located in Russia and Turkey. However, it is entirely possible that the incident was just a diversion, and Cobalt could be devising a new attack while security experts were focused on that “leaked” information.
