Monday, March 20, 2006
Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe asks public not to use Winny software[Winny - a popular file sharing program in Japan ]
Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe has asked the public not to use the file exchange software Winny following police and Defense Agency information leaks due to viruses.
"Government organizations are making every effort to prevent a recurrence," Abe said during a press conference on Wednesday. "But I want everyone to be cautious. The most secure way of preventing information leaks is not to use Winny software."
Data leaks take place when Winny-installed computers are infected with viruses. This has happened both in government bodies and with private firms.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A massive amount of investigation data kept by Ehime Prefectural Police has been leaked onto the Internet, apparently after the computer that kept the data was infected with a virus through the file exchange software Winny.
The amount of information leaked from the Ehime police computer is about four times that recently leaked online from Okayama Prefectural Police.
The leaked data includes investigative reports on a murder case in Uwajima, and expert statements on DNA analysis in a sex offence. It also contains a list of 188 people involved in investigations, plus their mobile phone numbers and addresses.
"It seems to be true that investigation information has been leaked," a senior Ehime police official said. "We are examining the details."
Sources said that the contents of the data suggest they were probably leaked online after the computer that kept them was infected with a virus via Winny.
Ehime police officials learned that investigation data might have been leaked a few days ago. Three officers are tracing the exact route of the attack.
Ehime police officers can use their private computers to write investigation reports with the consent of their bosses, and are required to notify them in writing whenever they take those computers out of the offices. They are also required to install anti-virus software when they connect their computers to the Internet.
The police force also told officers not to install Winny software on their private computers when they used those machines for work.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Winny (also known as WinNY) is a Japanese peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program that claims to be loosely inspired by the design principles behind the Freenet network and that also claimed to keep user identities untraceable. While Freenet was implemented in Java, Winny was implemented as a Windows C++ application.
2 hours cookbook at 9:41:00 PM
