Secure Email Project Blog; ISM3004; Courtney Jeffries

Secure Email Project Blog; ISM3004

by: Courtney Jeffries

Here is a screen capture of my Thunderbird inbox:

Web Article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html?_r=2

This article talks about a group of hackers that hacked into the computers of HBGary Federal, which is a security company that sells investigation services to other companies. The wikileaks hackers posted tens of thousands of emails that appeared to be of HBGary's internal company, on the internet. It looked as if these documents contained information for ways to undermine adversaries of Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; for example posting fake background research on their critics to embarrass them.

A spokesperson for Bank of America said they had never hired HBGary and were unaware of the presentations that were made involving them. Since these hacked e-mails were on a file-sharing network, blogs have been retrieving and discussing them all over the internet, as well as in The New York Times.

A power-point presentation was also released that claimed that three companies, HBGary, Palantir Technologies, and Berico Technologies were coming together to attack Wikileaks, who were rumored to have internal e-mails from Bank of America. The three companies planned to submit fake documents to Wikileaks and then expose them as forgeries. Other documents proposed ways to embarrass adversaries of the Chamber of Commerce, asking for an initial $200,000 and later $2 million. These e-mails revealed the chamber's opposition to the Obama healthcare plan.

HBGary made the statement that it had been a victim of a cyberattack and the documents found had been falsified. The two other businesses that were mentioned along side of HBGary put out statements to distance themselves from HBGary Federal, but did not say whether or not the documents were fake.

The article ends with a quote from chamber spokesperson Tom Collamore saying, "The leaked e-mails appear to show that HBGary Federal was willing to propose questionable actions in an attempt to drum up business, but the chamber was not aware of these proposals until HBGary’s e-mails leaked".

This article proves the point that it is important to secure your e-mail to protect important information that you may not want others to know about!