Experts at Sophos's global network of virus and spam analysis centers have reminded companies of the importance of computer security and control after it was revealed that a policeman has lost his job for using file-sharing peer-to-peer (P2P) software.The fired policeman, who has not been named, worked for the Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo which confirmed recently that personal information about 12,000 people related to criminal investigations had been distributed across the net from an officer's PC. The police officer had installed the Winny file-sharing software on his PC, and did not know that confidential data was being made available to other users via the P2P network.
About 6,600 police documents are said to have been compromised, including interrogation reports, statements from victims of crime, and classified locations of automatic license plate readers. Among the files was a list of the names, addresses and personal information about 400 members of the criminal Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza gang.
