Configured to leak data

The Stellenwerk Newsletter of the University of Hamburg was leaking data from some of their users. Because of a configuration error the mailing list relayed replys to their e-mails to all subscribed users. Unsubscribe messages and advertisement were spread over the mailinglist within this period of time. The responsible persons apologised for the inconvenience caused and already fixed the problem.

The original e-mail in German:

Subject: Entschuldigung vom Stellenwerk

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

unsere gestrige E-Mail an Sie und andere Kunden hatte aufgrund eines Systemfehlers unangenehme Folgen: Einige Antworten wurden nicht nur an uns, sondern an andere Empfänger gesendet. So sind sie eventuell auch in Ihrem Postfach gelandet.

Dafür möchten wir uns bei Ihnen entschuldigen und können Ihnen versichern, dass der Fehler mittlerweile behoben werden konnte und dass es nicht wieder vorkommen wird.

Wir sind alle sehr betroffen und hoffen, dass Sie auch zukünftig unseren Service gerne nutzen.

Wir bitten um Ihr Verständnis und verbleiben  

mit freundlichen Grüßen

xxxxx xxxxxxxx
Leitung Stellenwerk
_______________________________________

Thanks to Sup for reporting this incindent.

Not even Security by Obscurity

Got the link to this image from vmorbit - thanks for your contribution to the project.

Is this really working? Can't add anything more to this - check it out yourself. 

(c) by Cheezburger Network (Failblog.org) - pls contact them, if you want to use the image in further documents

Unattended Working Places - Part 1

Our unattended series goes on and this time we discovered an unattended working place at the airport in Munich. At first, I was not really shure what was going on, should have people really left the place unattended or was she just around the corner?

But, indeed, after 5 minutes of waiting, no one was showing up and the blue sign on the desk saying "Be right back." seemed to be there for a reason. I took a second, closer picture of the working place, noticing that all the screens were not locked and paper sheets were lying on the desk. 

Apart from the possibility that an attacker could exploit this situation to try to get access to the systems, it may have been enough for an attacker to study all the information presented to him by the paper sheets and the computer screens.

Therefore, companies should raise awareness for such problems and insist their employees to always lock the computer desktops when leaving the working place and to hide important working papers when there's the possibility that attackers could get advantage by reading them.