Leakage Instances - Risks from metadata and unsecured documents

2008

‘Digital Fingerprint’ within PDF file exposes Google: PDF files are not a foolproof mechanism to avoid leaking information via metadata. In this case metadata transferred when the PDF was created caused the Australian competition watchdog to accidentally reveal that Google as the anonymous source of a submission that is highly critical of eBay's proposal to force its users onto the PayPal payments system. Full story

General Electric lawyer leaks sensitive information on the inner workings of GEs management via PDFs Lawyers involved in a class action sex discrimination case against General Electric took the time and effort to black out sensitive information that they did not want revealed. However, the method they used did not fully ‘redact’ the information; a simple copy and paste exposed the information.  The story as reported in The Connecticut Law Tribune

Eli Lilly’s lawyers accidentally emails confidential info to New York Times Lawyers acting for US drug giant Eli Lilly & Co accidentally emailed a confidential memo to a reporter at the New York Times, due to a mix-up in the email program between two contacts with the same surname. The memo enabled the newspaper to reveal secrets about the drug company’s settlement talks with the US government in a $1 billion case. Read more here

The US Justice Department accidentally revealed secret FBI details in a PDF document posted online. Simple cut and pasting from the document revealed information on FBI wiretapping that the department thought it had redacted.
 (As of 23/5/08 the un-redacted information can still be retrieved at http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/igcaleafinal.pdf)

Scottish council caught out by tracked changes Aberdeenshire County Council released a version of a waste management report with tracked changes accidentally left in. The changes revealed incriminating information on negative aspects of the council’s activities, which was duly passed on to the press. Read more here

Leakage Incidents Pre 2008