Thread: Las Cruces employee accused of leaking confidental files

Former Las Cruces call center employee accused of leaking confidential files

By Ashley Meeks/ameeks@lcsun-news.com
Posted: 07/19/2011 06:42:00 PM MDT

LAS CRUCES - A former Las Cruces call center employee was arrested Tuesday by FBI agents for allegedly leaking confidential files that ended up in the hands of a computer hacking group, the Department of Justice and the FBI announced.

While working as an AT&T customer support representative at Convergys in Las Cruces, Lance Moore allegedly stole confidential business information stored on AT&T's servers and posted it on a public file sharing site, according to the complaint unsealed in the District of New Jersey, where AT&T is headquartered.

On April 10, Moore, 21, allegedly downloaded thousands of documents, PowerPoint presentations, images, PDFs, applications and other files that, on the same day, he allegedly posted on Fileape.com, a public file hosting site that promises user anonymity.

AT&T's Chief Security Office Team in New Jersey discovered the breach on April 16 and found that Moore had downloaded the material in question and accessed Fileape.com using an address on the company's internal network, according to court documents.

In addition, shortly before the upload, Moore had allegedly made "a number of Google searches for uploading files, file hosting and uploading zip files," court documents state.

He was terminated May 19.

On June 25, the computer hacking group LulzSec publicized that they had obtained confidential AT&T documents - the same Moore uploaded - and made them publicly available on the Internet.

Moore was arrested Tuesday morning at his home and made an initial appearance that afternoon in federal court in Las Cruces. He is charged in with one count of accessing a protected computer without authorization.
An indictment and a complaint merely contain allegations. Defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462

http://www.lcsun-news.com/las_cruces-news/ci_18509477

Contractor arrested for stealing info aired by hacktivist group

Wed, 2011-07-20 11:29 AM
By: John P. Mello, Jr.

Federal agents arrested in New Mexico on July 19 a former customer support contractor who the government alleges stole confidential documents from AT&T and posted them to a New Jersey file-sharing site for all to see. The information was later further exposed by the hacktivist group that called itself LulzSec.

According to a complaint in the case, Lance Moore, 21, of Las Cruces, NM, was charged with one count of accessing a protected computer without authorization. The count with which Moore is charged carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The complaint alleges that Moore was a customer support contractor at Convergys Corporation, a company that provided call center services to AT&T from its Las Cruces office. Moore was responsible for answering calls from AT&T’s mobile customers and troubleshooting their problems.

On April 10, it noted, Moore exceeded his authorized access to AT&T’s servers and downloaded, among other things, thousands of spreadsheets, Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, applications and image, PDF, and other files concerning AT&T’s plans for its 4G data network and Long Term Evolution mobile broadband network.

That same day, Moore posted the illegally downloaded files on Fileape.com, a public file-hosting site that promises user anonymity. Once uploaded to the site, the AT&T documents were available for public download, the complaint explained.

On June 25, the computer hacking group LulzSec publicized that they had obtained confidential AT&T documents and made them publicly available on the Internet. The documents were the ones Moore had previously uploaded to Fileape.com.

The AT&T documents were part of an information dump made by LulzSec when it announced it was disbanding.

"Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind — we hope — inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love," LulzSec declared in a statement posted to the Internet on June 26. "If anything, we hope we had a microscopic impact on someone, somewhere. Anywhere."

Lulz is Internet lingo for doing something just for laughs, often at the expense of someone else. The reference to dubious humor has inspired some observers to anoint the group with the nickname "the laughing hackers." The posse, however, prefers nautical conceits to jestful ones.

"Thank you for sailing with us," said the group, which it says consists of six members, "The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon."

No mention was made by LulzSec in their swan song dispatch of Moore.

While the LulzSec crew saw humor in their cyber shenanigans, law enforcement officials aren't sharing in the lulz.

“Publicizing a company’s confidential plans can have consequences in a competitive environment,â€