The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security

Chapter 14. Industrial Espionage

the threat of information attacks against government, corporations, and university systems is well established. Almost every day, the media reports a new computer virus, denial of service attack, or theft of credit card information from an e-commerce Web site.

We read about cases of industrial espionage such as Borland accusing Symantec of stealing trade secrets, Cadence Design Systems filing a suit charging the theft of source code by a competitor. Many business people read these stories and think it could never happen at their company.

It's happening every day.

VARIATION ON A SCHEME

The ruse described in the following tale has probably been pulled off many times, even though it sounds like something taken out of a Hollywood movie like The Insider, or from the pages of a John Grisham novel.

Class Action

Imagine that a massive class-action lawsuit is raging against a major pharmaceutical company, Pharmomedic. The suit claims that they knew one of their very popular drugs had a devastating side effect, but one that would not be evident until a patient had been on the medication for years. The suit alleges that they had results from a number of research studies that revealed this danger, but suppressed the evidence and never turned it over to the FDA as required.

William ("Billy") Chaney, the attorney of record on the masthead of the New York law firm that filed the class-action suit, has depositions from two Pharmomedic doctors supporting the claim. But ...