4 key points of human factor Part 2: self-interest and accident

Self-interest

Some people tend to profit from their status — one of the biggest temptations which cause incidents.

An information security director of North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries cracked a random number generator. The specialist had been working in the organisation for 10 years before he decided to create a malware and infect computers which managed winning combinations for the lotteries. The “correct” tickets were bought by his brother and friend. The scheme was started in 2005 and was running for 7 years.

Accident

A leak can be accidental — a mere fatigue or automated address selection in the email client. That is what happened to the Pentagon in 2017 — Public Affairs included an email of correspondent for Bloomberg in the mailing list. The journalist informed the Pentagon of the mistake but the email kept coming. The correspondence between the Department of Defense and the Federal Emergency Management Agency employees discussed ways the media covered the scale of Hurricane Maria’s destruction. They were sharing instructions on how to make the news seem positive.

The journalist benefited from the opportunity and equipped an article for Bloomberg Businessweek with some excerpts from the emails which he received accidentally from the Pentagon.

Another unintentional data exposure occurred in Finland. In 2017 a citizen of Oulu received an email revealing some messages sent by local policemen to each other discussing security measures which should be taken during the visit of Vladimir Putin. The email contained a detailed itinerary of Sauli Niinistö and the precise time of Putin’s helicopter arrival.

The Eastern Finland Police Department weren’t silent about the incident and explained the confidential email sent to a random person admitting a human factor to be the cause. The email client suggested contacts from the list of those who were addressed at least once automatically. The citizen of Oulu who received the secret email and the press officer appeared to have similar names.