Swedish Police Swoop on Dan Egerstad

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Not good.

Via TheAge.com.au.

[snip]

The Swedish hacker who perpetrated the so-called hack of the year has been
arrested in a dramatic raid on his apartment, during which he was taken in
for questioning and several of his computers confiscated.

Dan Egerstad, a security consultant, intercepted data carried over a global
communications network used by embassies around the world in August and
gained access to 1000 sensitive email accounts. They contained confidential
diplomatic memos and other sensitive government emails.

After informing the governments involved of their security failings and
receiving no response, Egerstad published 100 of the email accounts,
including login details and passwords, on his website for anyone curious
enough to have a look. The site, derangedsecurity.com, has since been taken
offline.

The hack required little more than tools freely available on the internet,
and Egerstad maintains he broke no laws. In fact, he is confident the email
accounts he gained access to were already compromised by other hackers, so
his efforts in fact prevented them from continuing their spying.

[snip]

More:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/security/hacker-of-year-arrest/2007/11/15/119
4766821481.html

Background:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/09/10/Security-researcher-intercepts-em
bassy-passwords_1.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136630-c,onlinesecurity/article.html
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/embassy-e-mail-.html

- - ferg


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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/