Trojan horse attack involving many major Israeli companies, executives

[Amir Herzberg]

Possibly the most visible Trojan attack was just exposed by the Israeli 
police. The Trojan was written (apparently) by an Israeli programmer, 
living in Europe in the last few years. It was planted in many Israeli 
companies, such as the major cellular companies. There were conflicting 
reports so far on the distribution method, and it may have used several, 
such as a program sent by e-mail or on CD to company. The scheme had 
three layers: the programmer; several `private investigation` companies 
(including the largest in Israel!); and the customers (including many 
hi-profile Israeli companies). The victims were also many leading 
Israeli companies. A lot of confidential documents were disclosed (via 
FTP to several servers, from which the customers downloaded the documents).

This is a story worth a movie, really, since there is also a personal 
and media issue here... This whole thing was discovered not by any of 
the victim companies, but  by a different victim: a well-known couple 
who wrote a `psychology-thriller`. The wife is the more well known; she 
is the host of an extremely popular (and controversial) talk-radio show, 
consulting listeners on different personal problems. This couple were 
apparently targeted by the Trojan for personal reasons; the programmer 
is their ex-son-in-law...

See more info e.g. at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/581790.html
-- 
Best regards,

Amir Herzberg

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Bar Ilan University
http://AmirHerzberg.com

New: see my Hall Of Shame of Unprotected Login pages: 
http://AmirHerzberg.com/shame.html

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