Anyone renting publicly available computers
when they travel, or using computers available in hotel business centers,
or airport kiosks should be cautious about the types of transactions
they conduct on those machines. Security
Focus is reporting that a New York area man has pled guilty to
installing software onto publicly available computers at 13 New York-area
Kinko's stores that logged the keystrokes of all of the people who
rented those machines.
The story
details how 25-year old JuJu Jiang collected data from those machines
for nearly two years, "us[ing] victims' financial information
to open new accounts under their names, and then siphon money from
their legitimate accounts into the new, fraudulent ones."
The story goes on to explain how, in
one instance, Jiang remotely retrieved personal data from a victim's
home computer. After the victim had previously used the remote access
service GoToMyPC, from a Kinko's computer, Jiang was able to use the
victim's captured account information to remotely access the victim's
computer and set up a financial account at a third site in the victim's
name.
This episode illustrates the importance
of keeping sensitive data stored and accessed only from secured machines.
Additionally, sensitive data should be password protected and encrypted
to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
For more
information on keylogging software and protecting your privacy &
security online, see: