P2P backdoor spills personal info on Supreme Court Justice

Personal data from over two thousand clients of a Virginia investment firm was obtained through a Limewire backdoor and made available for over six months before coming to light.

It took a reader of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog to point it out last month, finally alerting Wagner Resource Group that their clients' personal data had been leaked. Of the 2,000 clients listed, about 700 entries contained a name, birth date, and Social Security number; the rest of those listed had slightly less information. Affected clients include several "high-powered lawyers," and Clinton-appointed Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

The information was found to have been obtained through an (unnamed) employee's use of peer-to-peer file sharing service Limewire on a company workstation. Yes, there are apparently people who still use Limewire, despite its widespread reputation as an unsafe, if not entirely outdated, service. For over a year however, the Limewire brand has slowly been changing into a digital music shop like iTunes, Amazon, and now Rhapsody.

Wagner reportedly sent letters to affected clients last week which offered six months of free credit report monitoring, an almost standard practice after such events transpire.