Supreme Court Justice Caught Up in Limewire Data Breach

Investment firm employee shared more than he bargained for, including the names, dates, and social security numbers of some 2,000 of the firm's clients with others using the popular file-sharing program.

Everybody with the even the faintest knowledge of file-sharing programs and networks knows that although sharing content is integral for the health of a given P2P community, it's always paramount that you monitor EXACTLY WHAT and HOW MUCH you are sharing.

Apparently this was the first of many rules ignored by an employee of the Wagner Resource Group, a financial services firm founded in 1979, who decided to install Limewire on his work PC and share the confidential contents of his HDD with the rest of the world. He managed to expose the names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of some 2,000 of the firm's clients, the most notable being Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, over a six month period!

Heaven forbid if he sees another P2P or file-sharing related case come across the Supreme Court docket in the future.

Tiversa, the company hired by the investment firm to take care of the problem, discovered that more than a dozen Limewire users had downloaded the list of personal data from the network from places as remote as Sri Lanka and Colombia.

"This case is unique because of the high profile of the targets," said Robert Boback, chief executive of Tiversa. "The individuals on this list are at a very high risk, almost imminent, of identity theft."

Phylyp Wagner, the founder of the firm, hadn't ever even heard of P2P.

"To me, this was devastating," he said. "I didn't even know what peer-to-peer was. I do now."

The same could be said of his undoubtedly former employee as well I'm sure.