Fergie's Tech Blog

Massive Insider 'Industrial Espionage' Breach At DuPont

Larry Greenemeier writes on InformationWeek:

The Delaware U.S. Attorney on Thursday revealed a massive insider data breach at chemicals company DuPont where a former scientist late last year pled guilty to trying to steal $400 million worth of company trade secrets and now faces up to a decade in prison, a fine of $250,000, and restitution when sentenced in March.

Gary Min worked as a research chemist for DuPont for 10 years before accepting a job with DuPont competitor Victrex PLC in Asia in October, 2005. Between August and December of that year, Min downloaded 22,000 sensitive documents and viewed 16,706 more in the company's electronic library, making him the most active user of that database in the company, according to prosecutors.

It's unclear whether Min's frequent access to that database tipped off an automatic alert to DuPont officials or whether his behavior was discovered by studying database access logs. Regardless, Min left DuPont on Feb. 3, 2006, and transferred 180 DuPont documents to a Victrex-owned laptop computer.

posted by Fergie @ 2/15/2007 01:16:00 PM