Protecting the P&C Industry’s Intellectual Assets
by Steve McDaniel, JD, PhD
Technology Litigators
At last. Here I was at the trailhead of Avalanche Lake in Glacier National Park. 3,000 foot waterfalls and blue-ice glaciers darted the
scenery. It was cool. It was fresh. It was
beautiful, and it was just the respite from
the Texas heat and months of hard work
that I so desperately needed. For weeks,
I had prepared to be gone from the office,
taking care of a month’s worth of business in advance, contemplating all that
could go wrong and putting measures into
place to back up operations in case they
did. I couldn’t be happier to be embarking on my first hike. And then I saw it…
no, not a bear,…a voicemail. Shouldn’t
I just ignore it, I thought? I did my time
in the office before I left; everything’s in
order. But it was my banker, and with all
the banking transactions I had done for
the coming month’s expenses, I thought
better of it and listened.
“I was just calling to find out the pur-
pose of this last wire request. We need to
know for international wires” was the
message from my banker. Indeed, I had
made several international wires to pay
patent fees prior to my departure. I dialed
her back. Before I could even say hello, she
cut me off “Don’t worry, honey, I don’t
need anything more. I just got your e-mail
explaining the wire transfer to Singapore
and sent it off on time!” Singapore,
Singapore, Singapore…we didn’t have any
patents pending in Singapore! She contin-
ued, “You know, the one for the purchase
of your condo there.” “Sounds exotic,” I
remarked, “but that wasn’t me; Barbara,
I’ve been hacked.”
“I’ll call you back,” was all I heard,
and the phone went dead. Fifteen minutes
later, I learned that almost $75,000 held in
the company’s money market account had
been wired to an account in Singapore, no
doubt to fund some organized crime ring
there. I heard a vacuum sound as the life
was sucked out of my vacation.
The e-mails my banker saw never went
through my email account. The entire
communication took place outside my
view. They appeared to originate from my
e-mail address, and except for some bro-
ken English, sounded and looked
like my e-mails from the previous
week to Barbara. Specific account
names were referenced, and the
withdrawal amount coincided
with the balances in the account.
The hacker had assumed my
identity, and taken control over
my communications.
How did it happen? Well,
as I sit here writing this article
at Starbucks, I am touched by
the irony that not long ago, on
some coffee- fueled work rant at
Starbucks, I was hacked. Could
have been the guy sitting next
to me with password hacking
software who saw me on the
Starbucks public network and
cracked my AOL (yes, I am still
on AOL) password. “How could
they do that?” I begged of my
company IT guy, only to find that
it’s free software that anyone can
get online and it works great and
is very user friendly. As e-mails
are travelling over public wireless
networks, i.e. the ones that give
you a warning that others might
be able to view your informa-
tion,…ok, that should have been a
hint….your e-mail password trav-
els with it, and with free, easy to
use software, anyone who wants
it can see your e-mail password. In fact,
I was told, it was not likely the first time
someone had intercepted my password.
It’s happening all the time. What’s the les-
son here? No more sending e-mails over
unprotected networks…ever. Don’t even
have your e-mail open when you on a
public network.
So besides draining your bank account,
what are hackers after? They want your
money, your trade secrets, you customer
files. Often, the hackers are part of a consortium of hackers for hire. Their customers
hire them for various purposes. Just imag-ine…your customer launches a complaint
that your next-generation coating is not
performing as advertised; causing cracking
and degradation of the underlying article.
You are surprised because you’ve had nothing but positive results in testing and raving
reviews from your customers. You ask the
client to send you the coating for testing,
only to discover that the formula has been
Hacked Off!
