From: Karyn Pichnarczyk (karyn@sandstorm.net)
Date: Fri May 12 2006 - 13:55:03 EDT
Let me list some actual damage. The company now knows that someone
who was not authorized, and did not have the best interests of the
company in mind (or else they would have contacted the company with
their findings, not the company's customers or journalists) had access
to basically Anything and Everything in their computer systems.
Therefore, the Actual Damage is the re-evaluation of all systems, and
verification of all data on those compromised systems, to ensure that
the company's data has not been twiddled with/changed/modified.
What assurance does the company have that this criminal (and yes,
it it criminal to break into a system without authorization) didn't
fiddle with the data, perhaps even putting in code that will either
cause the company to automatically send out payments to someone who
doesn't deserve them, or erase records of expected payments, etc.?
What if the criminal set up something on these computers to make it
appear as if the company itself was performing a criminal activity,
that will later cause the leaders of the company to be arrested?
A defense of "I didn't do anything" does not lead much credence to
a criminal's testimony.
It costs lots of money to pay employees (and likely expert consultants
as well) for their time to clean up and verify the systems. And what
if they aren't as diligent as the original criminal thinks they should
be? If something was planted by the criminal, this Criminal can now
come back and once again report to the media and the company's customers
that the cleanup was not done properly. Thus the company has to spend
more money being diligent in their response.
Money is Actual Damage, Mr. Cooper.
Art Cooper wrote:
> Because I BELIEVE there is a "LOT" more here than meets the eye.. I wonder
> if he took the evidence to the Univ. and they ignore him.. If so, then
> perhaps he had an axe to grind.. My point is this - what ACTUAL DAMAGE was
> caused? Most lawyers will tell you that you MUST prove there was malice and
> ACTUAL DAMAGE.
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