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Government
Feds nab P2P thief in harbinger of 21st century ID theft
Federal agents have accused Gregory Kopiloff of Seattle of using the peer-to-peer networks LimeWire and Soulseek to access users' hard drives and grab personal information and credit card numbers from tax returns, student aid applications and other financial forms, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.The message the feds have for college kids and other P2P users: "You are handing criminals the keys to your computer.
Federal agents have accused Gregory Kopiloff of Seattle of using the peer-to-peer networks LimeWire and Soulseek to access users' hard drives and grab personal information and credit card numbers from tax returns, student aid applications and other financial forms, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.
Robert Boback, an industry expert on peer-to-peer risk management who participated in a news conference at the U.S. Attorney's Office on Thursday, characterized what Kopiloff is accused of doing as a harbinger, calling it a "new age of crime." People engaged in peer-to-peer file sharing "don't realize what they are sharing is their entire hard drive.""This is the new world of identity theft," he said. "There are tens of thousands of individuals making a living doing this kind of work." He likened peer-to-peer file sharing with a computer containing sensitive financial data to "putting meat into a school of piranha."