Oops. Ann Martens blogs on taxpayers’ time and now this.
A state worker surfs porn sites on the job allowing in a virus, appropriately called a Trojan Horse spyware virus, compromises 1300 taxpayers’ information and the Oregonian spends much of the story lamenting that this happens at many job sites and whether or not those hapless taxpayers will get help cleaning up their credit reports. Apparently they’ll save their moral outrage for Karl Rove’s truth-telling or the President’s trip to Iraq.
But the technology did not stop an employee from using an office computer to surf porn sites and download a Trojan horse, a hidden spyware program not yet known to intrusion-detection software. The Trojan installed itself Jan. 5 and for the next four months secretly captured and relayed data to the hackers who created it. (emphasis: MINE)
More than 1,300 taxpayers are now at risk of identity theft. The Department of Revenue, which disclosed the security breach Tuesday, said the confidential data consisted of Social Security numbers, names and addresses but included no tax records or financial or credit card information.