The sale of 50 lost USB thumb drives to Sophos has resulted in an investigation by Australian authorities into the rail network operator.
New South Wales privacy commissioner John McAlteer said that RailCop "had an obligation to work out what was on there and if it was personal information they either had the obligation to cleanse it or to contact the person to whom it related."
As the privacy watchdog only has a mandate for public agencies, Sophos aren't expected to be in the frame of the investigation.
Sophos technology chief Paul Ducklin analysed the contents of the drives and found that most were infected with malware. Ducklin told the Sydney Morning Herald that should be "frying bigger fish" rather than going after RailCorp.
Ducklin also said the rail network couldn't be expected to be responsible for security mistakes made by their customers.
"What next? Will RailCorp be expected to police the trains looking for people using unsecured 3G wireless hotspots on their daily commute?" he asked.
Advertisement
Related Stories
- iOS update fixes bugs and security flaws May 8th 2012 at 5:45AM
- Microsoft fingers Chinese firm in RDP flaw leak May 4th 2012 at 3:00AM
- Microsoft fixes '0-day' Hotmail flaw Apr 30th 2012 at 12:19AM
- Global Payments breach of 1.5m credit cards Apr 3rd 2012 at 8:29AM
- Girls Around Me a 'wake-up call' on Facebook privacy Apr 2nd 2012 at 12:03AM
- Hacktivists lifted more data than criminal gangs Mar 22nd 2012 at 11:14PM
- Microsoft accused of leaking attack code Mar 18th 2012 at 9:30PM
- Lulzsec leader Sabu turned by the FBI Mar 7th 2012 at 1:15AM
- EU warns Google on privacy policy Feb 28th 2012 at 9:59PM
- Over half of UK companies infected by malware Feb 13th 2012 at 11:57AM
Add a new comment
You need to be logged in to post comments. If you do not have an account then please register.
Comments
0 comments
There are no comments yet, be the first to add one!