Fergie's Tech Blog

D.C. Law Firm Claims IBM Worker Hacked Its Computers

Paul McDougall writes on InformationWeek:

A Washington, D.C. law firm says it's the victim of a computer hacker, but claims the perpetrator isn't some nerdy cyberpunk of offshore criminal gang. Rather, the firm says its computers are under attack by tech giant IBM.

Attorneys at Butera & Andrews claim an unidentified hacker working within IBM's Websphere services facility in Durham, N.C., secretly dropped malicious code into the firm's e-mail server, giving him or her unauthorized access to the system. The IBM worker "initiated, directed and managed this attack from the Durham, North Carolina facility," Butera & Andrews claims in a lawsuit. The firm says its servers were hit by the assailant's code more than 40,000 times throughout 2005.

In its complaint, originally filed in April in the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., Butera & Andrews gives no motive for the attack. However, it says it fingered IBM because an IP address traced to the computer initiating the attacks is registered to a system inside the IBM facility.

posted by Fergie @ 7/14/2006 09:47:00 AM