One office that I entered was a complete mess. Papers were strewn all over the place, and two computers were left on without the workstation-locking product installed. The monitors were turned off, but I simply turned one on and discovered that the employee was still logged into an e-mail account. Fortunately for me, this person liked to save e-mail messages. I browsed through them until I came across a message containing the master development schedule, one of the company's most sensitive documents.
Espionage involves the use of basic, effective methods.
This one evening's work demonstrated the payoff for just looking through unprotected information. I had not even picked any locks or left any signs of forced entry. I equipped the laptop with the Internet Scanner from Internet Security Systems Inc. of Atlanta, Ga., and a variety of hacker tools that compromise systems with vulnerabilities identified by the Scanner. When I got to my office, I unplugged the office PC from the ethernet connection and plugged in my Sun. I first ran the Scanner against key computer systems, and sure enough it located known vulnerabilities on several exported file systems that I knew contained sensitive information.