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Citigroup Customer Data Leaked on P2P Network
The names, Social Security numbers and credit information of 5,208 customers are leaked onto the LimeWire peer-to-peer file-sharing network.
Citgroup has confirmed that it’s investigating a data breach involving the names, Social Security numbers and credit information of 5,208 customers leaked by an employee of its ABN Amro Mortgage Group unit onto the LimeWire peer-to-peer file-sharing network.
The information is likely to have been exposed to millions of LimeWire users, given that there are at least 10 million nodes online in a P2P file-sharing network at any point in time, said Chris Gormley, Tiversa’s chief operating officer.
The ABN employee responsible for posting the data signed up last year to use a LimeWire-like P2P service and inadvertently exposed not only the spreadsheet but also personal documents, including her resume and a Travelocity confirmation of a family trip. The woman told the news service that she was laid off this summer and wasn’t aware of the breach before Dow Jones contacted her on Sept. 20.
Earlier in Sept., a confidential terrorist threat assessment on Chicago done by Booz Allen Hamilton also made it out to a public file-sharing network. A reporter with Fox News n Chicago reported that he used LimeWire to access the document, which was authored in 2002.
Also in Sept., a Seattle man, Gregory Thomas Kopiloff, was arrested in what the Justice Department said was the first case brought against someone for using file-sharing data to commit identity theft.
