Content Security in the news
Documents Describe Whole Foods’ Strategy
New York Times - August 14, 2007
Many of the details in the documents, which F.T.C. lawyers filed electronically, were not meant to be released publicly, but words intended to be inaccessible were actually just electronically shaded black. The words could be searched, copied, pasted and read in versions downloaded from court computer servers.
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Insurance Company Loses 540,000 N.Y. Employee Records
eWeek.com - July 26, 2006
Government officials in New York are warning 540,000 injured state workers that an outside contractor has lost a computer containing their personal data, including the employees' names, addresses and social security numbers.
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20,000 Email Addresses Shared With Subscribers
The Register - July 26, 2006
PlusNet has been reported to the Information Commission for sending out 20,000 email addresses to 3,500 subscribers of its ISP brand, Force9.
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Thieves Steal Personal Data of 26.5M Vets
CBS News - May 22, 2006
Thieves took sensitive personal information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, after a Veterans Affairs employee improperly brought the material home, the government said Monday.
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Microsoft Word's Hidden Tags Reveal Once-Anonymous Peer Reviewers
Chronicle of Higher Education - April 20, 2006
The peer-review process at many academic journals is intended to be blind, meaning that authors do not know who is reviewing their work. But a little-known setting in Microsoft Word has led to the unmasking of some peer reviewers, compromising the anonymity of the process.
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Police Secret Password Blunder
Sydney Morning Herald - April 5, 2006
A NSW Police blunder has led to a database of email passwords - including those of the anti-terrorism chief and hundreds of journalists - published on the internet. The names, email addresses and passwords of as many as 800 people who signed up to receive NSW Police media releases are listed on the database.
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The enemy within the firewall
Sydney Morning Herald - March 14, 2006
Employees are now regarded as a greater danger to workplace cyber security than the gangs of hackers and virus writers launching targeted attacks from outside the firewall.
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Database reveals sensitive police information
News.com - March 12, 2006
THE SUNDAY TIMES can reveal the leaking of classified police information in extraordinary computer files that name thousands of serving police officers.
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HK Privacy Commissioner to investigate leak of identities
chineview.cn - March 10, 2006
Hong Kong's Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) is highly concerned about the information leak of 20,000 people who complained about police over the past decade and will look into the case, an OPC spokeswoman said Friday.
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Google's gaffe reveals internal secrets
Notes inadvertently offer a look at financial plans, future product
San Francisco Chronicle - March 8, 2006
Google Inc. told analysts more than it wanted last week.
The Internet search giant said Tuesday that it inadvertently disclosed its closely guarded financial projections and also said it let slip information about a personal, digital storage service that is in the works.
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Google inadvertently reveals internal projections
CNET News.com - March 7, 2006
Google acknowledged Tuesday that it erred last week when it posted on its Web site internal projections not meant for the public.
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HK Privacy Commissioner to investigate leak of identities
Chinaview.cn - March 3, 2006
Hong Kong's Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) is highly concerned about the information leak of 20,000 people who complained about police over the past decade and will look into the case, an OPC spokeswoman said Friday.
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BMO's profit, dividend up - Employees get quick peek at financials
Toronto Star - March 2, 2006
Bank of Montreal's first-quarter profit rose to $630 million from $602 million, the bank reported yesterday.
The bank released its earnings report a day ahead of schedule after it mistakenly released partial results to some employees.
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Sun Life Financial increases quarterly dividend on common shares by 8%
CBC News - February 9, 2006
Sun Life Financial Inc. (TSX:SLF) boosted its quarterly dividend on common shares by eight per cent Thursday, a day after an error forced the company to release its fourth-quarter and year-end results ahead of schedule.
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Slip-up spills beans on Dell notebooks
CNET News.com - February 1, 2006
Apparent specifications for Dell's future notebooks were briefly exposed by Google's search engine Tuesday, before the spreadsheet was removed from a Dell FTP site and from Google's cache.
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Treasury apologises over email
BBC - January 24, 2006
The Treasury has said it "deeply regrets" any offence caused by an e-mail mistakenly sent to journalists.
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Military says leak not serious
JoongAng Daily - January 12, 2006
The Defense Security Command said yesterday that no top secret information was in confidential military documents leaked on the Internet from the Defense Acquisition Program Administration.
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Justice Department Reveals Social Security Numbers
InformationWeek - December 23, 2005
A document on the Justice Department Executive Office for Immigration Review's site listed the name and Social Security number of a woman involved in a 2003 immigration review case. Other searches of the site yielded more Social Security numbers and identifying information.
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Merck Gaffe Impacts Litigation
Forbes.com - December 13, 2005
In the year since pharmaceutical giant Merck withdrew its arthritis drug Vioxx from shelves, the company has been hit with 7,000 personal injury lawsuits--one of which already cost the company $253 million. But it could be a frequently misused feature of Microsoft Word that turns out to be the straw that broke Merck's back.
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School psychologist's student records accidentally posted online
Boston.com - December 2, 2005
A school psychologist's records detailing students' confidential information and personal struggles were accidentally posted to the school system's Web site and were publicly available for at least four months.
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Beware Your Trail of Digital Fingerprints
The New York Times - November 7, 2005
IT hardly ranks in the annals of "gotcha!" but right-wing blogs were buzzing for at least a few days last week when an unsigned Microsoft Word document was circulated by the Democratic National Committee.
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Hit send...and regret it
ZDNet Australia - November 4, 2005
A poorly constituted e-mail sent on Melbourne Cup Day this week saw Westpac's full-year profit results potentially exposed before being finalised and lodged with the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
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UN office doctored report on murder of Hariri
The Times - October 22, 2005
THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.
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IT Risk is too Important to Leave to the CIO
CRM Today - October 20, 2005
Information Technology (IT) risk has become one of the most significant corporate threats and a major issue for risk managers, according to a survey of 218 senior risk managers by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
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Cop who bungled files on stress leave
The Courier Mail - August 17, 2005
THE senior investigator with Victoria's Office of Police Integrity who headed a bungled investigation in which hundreds of confidential files were sent to the wrong person has been on stress leave.
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Security Hole in Adobe PDF Reader and Acrobat PDF Viewer, Warns Adobe
Aunty Spam's Net Patrol - June 20, 2005
Adobe Systems, the makers of the popular Adobe Acrobat, is warning today of a security hole in both their Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat PDF viewer software. Adobe Reader is a widely distributed and used free software program for viewing PDF files.
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Hackers breach credit card systems
Infoconomy - June 20, 2005
More than 40 million credit card customers are at risk of having their accounts violated after hackers were able to gain access to sensitive computer systems at a payment processing company.
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Nonpartisan Testimony Gets White House Edit
LATimes.com - May 19th, 2005
When the Senate Democratic Policy Committee asked the head of a business organization advocating an overhaul of Social Security to testify at a hearing last week, the members expected him to take the White House line.
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Readers 'declassify' US document
BBC News - May 2nd 2005
When news started circulating in Italy that a heavily censored Pentagon report into the death of secret agent Nicola Calipari had been decrypted, many thought it must be the work of some top-notch hacker.
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Secrets Revealed in Classified Report
The Register - May 2nd 2005
In an incredible online cock-up, the full details of a classified US military report into the shooting of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari in Iraq have been made widely and publicly available.
The error was caused by the US military itself, which posted an unclassified version of the report on the internet as a PDF file with large chunks blacked out. However, the Pentagon had failed to save the file with the edit lines in place so a simple copy-and-paste of the document into a word processing application revealed the report in full.
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Italian report queries US claims
BBC News - May 2nd 2005
Italy has published a report into the shooting of a secret agent by US troops at a roadblock in Iraq, which conflicts with the US version of events.
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E-mail gaffe reveals HIV, AIDS names
Palm Beach Post- February 22, 2005
WEST PALM BEACH - A highly confidential list of the names and addresses of 4,500 Palm Beach County residents with AIDS and 2,000 others who are HIV positive was e-mailed Thursday to more than 800 county health department employees.
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Do your documents contain hidden data?
OUT-LAW.COM - October 14, 2004
With governments, large corporations and newspapers guilty of inadvertently disclosing information hidden in the content of Word and other electronic documents, a new web site has been set up to help ordinary companies and individuals avoid embarrassing disclosures.
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Lemon Juice, Cornstarch, and Microsoft: Invisible Ink And Your Documents
Law Practice's Law Practice News - Summer 2004
Did you know that electronic documents are often embedded with hidden text that reveals information regarding authors, edits, text changes, and more? The information is called "metadata" and it has become the source of delight and disgust for many attorneys. This article first appeared in WI State Bar Section of Law Practice's Law Practice News, Summer 2004.
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Revealing Codes
PC Magazine – June 8, 2004
What do your Microsoft Office documents say about you? SCO Group, a Utah-based business software company, found out the hard way when it recently filed suit against DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone. The suit's text had been created in Microsoft Word with Track Changes enabled, which users commonly do so they can see what edits were applied and by whom. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, no one had removed the tracking—which revealed, among other things, that Bank of America had been the original intended defendant.
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Canberra Crackdown on Office Leaks
Australian IT – May 20, 2004
The furor over Mark Latham's much-amended speech to the ALP National Conference in January has spurred the Federal Government to address security concerns over functions on Microsoft Word that allow users to track changes to text.
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What Lies Beneath
Minnesota Technology® Magazine - Spring 2004
You do it every day . You probably do it without even thinking. You build documents, you save them, you share them. But what are you really sharing? Through the simple act of creating and sharing documents, your company may be exposing sensitive, hidden data in your letters, spreadsheets, and presentations.
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Word Flaw a Window into Microsoft
 Mercury News – April 2, 2004
You'd think the people who make Microsoft Word understand enough about the program to avoid embarrassing themselves with unintended disclosures of internal information.
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Microsoft Office Advice and News From Woody Leonhard
Woody’s Office Watch – December 3, 2003
I'm astounded at how many people just don't get it. Word hides important, personal information inside its documents. You can get rid of some of the information most of the time - but it's very, very difficult to delete potentially embarrassing information all of the time.
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@Info.Policy: What’s hidden in that document you posted?
Government Computer News – November 24, 2003
How careful are you about placing agency documents on the Web? A casual posting can include unseen changes, comments or other elements not intended for public consumption. Here are a couple of embarrassing examples.
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Microsoft Struggles With an Identity Crisis
The Sydney Morning Herald – November 25, 2003
There is a certain irony in the fact that Microsoft has at last discovered that - thanks to good old Microsoft - emailing those Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations exposes users to potential hazards.
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@Info.Policy: What’s hidden in that document you posted? Government Computer News - November 24, 2003
How careful are you about placing agency documents on the Web? A casual posting can include unseen changes, comments or other elements not intended for public consumption. Here are a couple of embarrassing examples.
Read the full article here >>
The Hidden Dangers of Documents
BBC News – August 18, 2003
Your Microsoft Word document can give readers more information about you than you might think. Even Alastair Campbell has fallen foul of the snippets of invisible data few of us realize our documents contain.
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The Fundamentals of Electronic Discovery
Boston Bar Journal - March/April 2003
As you sit in your office reading this article there is a good chance that you will hear a "ding" or some other signal informing you of a new e-mail. It is also likely that, at some point today, you will make entries in your personal digital assistant ("PDA") or electronic calendar; will receive or send electronic faxes via your computer; and will send a draft brief or other important document to your client for review. You are not the only one engaged in the daily use of such technology.
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Microsoft Office Metadata: What You Don't See Can Hurt You
TechRepublic – March 4, 2003
Aside from the main body of the document, Microsoft Office documents often include authoring information, internal comments, and other hidden text. Your IT organization may need tools and policies to make sure the wrong eyes don't see this metadata.
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Washington Post's scanned-to-PDF Sniper Letter More Revealing Than Intended
Planet PDF - 26 October 2002
As reported earlier today, The Washington Post published a scanned-to-PDF version of a handwritten letter left at the scene of one of the recent sniper shootings, allegedly written by the killers and intended for the police.
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Publishing Documentation in Microsoft Word – Don’t Do It! Suite101.com - August 21, 2001
To save costs, many small businesses take the do-it-yourself route to publishing product and support documentation. The tool of choice is often Microsoft Word - after all, you probably already have a copy of it and know how to use it reasonably well. But while using Word to *develop* your materials is an acceptable choice, using it to *publish* documentation is not! Read on to learn some of Word's shortcomings as a publishing method, and what alternatives are available.
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