September 11, 2007

Researcher collects emails and passwords

This could be everyone’s nightmare, a security researcher has managed to collate thousands of email addresses and passwords that are either from or related to foreign embassies, of which include Russia and India.

This has been done by him being able to utilise the onion router, which is used to disguise embassy traffic etc, the researcher was able to set up a node and connect to the network, in fact because this is a volunteer network, it is pretty reasonable to assume that anyone can create a set up like this.

How was he able to find the information? Simply because the 99 per cent of the traffic, which included web site visits, IM and emails were sent across unencrypted. Which is just as you would expect, complacency has a way of always creeping into these processes. Can embassies afford to carry on like this, in this day and age?

Source [Computer World]