6417975
story
Comments: 152 +- Technology: Delta Air Lines Sued Over Alleged E-mail Hacking on Wednesday October 14, @05:52PM
Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday October 14, @05:52PM
from the down-and-dirty-delta dept.
from the down-and-dirty-delta dept.
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicsecurity.gif); width:59px; height:78px;
security
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topictransportation.gif); width:75px; height:69px;
transportation
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicit.gif); width:75px; height:61px;
it
alphadogg writes "Delta Air Lines is being sued for allegedly hacking the e-mail account of a passenger rights advocate supporting legislation that would allow access to food, water and toilets during long delays on the tarmac. Kathleen Hanni, executive director of Flyersrights.org, alleges Delta obtained sensitive e-mails and files and used the material in an attempt to derail the 'Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights of 2009,' of which four versions are pending before Congress. The suit was filed on Tuesday in US District Court for the Southern District of Texas and seeks a minimum of $11 million in damages. Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007, had been investigating surface delays in air travel."
Related Stories
Wake up and smell the coffee.
-- Ann Landers
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.
Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:5, Informative)
Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007, had been investigating surface delays in air travel. According to the suit, Hanni exchanged information with Frederick J. Foreman, who worked for Metron Aviation, which was hired by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to study surface delays. The suit says Foreman provided information to Hanni with permission from Metron, including a report that fingered Delta as having excessive surface delays. Metron is also named in the suit.
During the correspondence, AOL informed Hanni that her e-mails, spreadsheets and lists of donors were being redirected to an unknown destination. Also, files on Hanni's computer became corrupted, the suit says. The hacking began in 2008 and continued through this year.
This does not constitute "hacking" (or even cracking, as it should be termed). Unless I've missed something here, the actual allegation is that information was improperly disclosed, but not that an email account was broken into.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Somehow the redirection got added there and files became corrupted. Since he's also specifically suing Delta Air Lines, it surely sounds like hacking took place.
Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, the odds are extremely good that nobody on Slashdot actually knows the full story, but the "evidence" as presented is absurdly weak for a hacking accusation.
Parent
Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:5, Informative)
Not that weak really...
From the article:
Gaughan (Delta) asked Foreman what information he had shared with Hanni, and Foreman said he sent Hanni information that was already public, according to the affidavit.
Foreman said in the affidavit that Gaughan showed him what appeared to be "hacked and stolen e-mail communications" since the material involved the private e-mail accounts of both himself and Hanni. The e-mails also included correspondence between Foreman and Gary Stoller of USA Today and Susan Stellin, a freelance reporter. Foreman was fired on Sept. 25, according to the affidavit.
Private email account correspondence in the hands of a Delta manager with no legal access to the account is not weak evidence. To be corroborated of course like all other claims, but it's not a weak claim if it can be proven. There have been more "hacking" cases like this lately that blur the term to mean "unauthorized" access more than gaining computer access by advanced technological means.
To change the forwarding on an internal company server, sure, fine. But to do it on outside accounts that you do not own, not so fine.
Parent
Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:4, Informative)
What part of PRIVATE EMAIL accounts do you not get?
As an AC posted here previously:
Here's another source:
http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/10/consumer-activist-kate-hanni-a.html [dallasnews.com]
Mr. Gaughan proceeded to show me on his computer monitor what appeared to be hacked and stolen email communications within the last six (6) months or more between Kate Hanni and me, me and Gary Stoller of USA Today, me and Susan Stellin, a freelance reporter, and Kate Hanni and a number of people concerning the Passenger Bill of Rights, excessive surface delays, and other private communications. It was clear that they had email transactions from both of my private email accounts: Hotmail (eckmaster12@msn.com) and Yahoo (eckmaster@mmi-gov.com). It was also clear that these emails were from Kate Hanni's private and personal email account (katcrew4@aol.com), as well as from Gary Stoller's (gstoller@usatoday.com) private USA Today account, and Susan Stellin's (stellin@earthlink.net) private and personal email account. There were no emails communications from Metron Aviation's email system only communications from information that I gave her as fuel for getting the Passenger Bill of Rights passed in Congress. He said that Delta Airlines sent this information to them.
Clear enough?
Parent
Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:4, Informative)
From the article,
1. *someone* was apparently hacking into Hanni's account.
2. Foreman works for Metron.
3. Foreman exchanges emails with Hanni.
4. Senior VP of Metron calls Foreman into office and shows apparent emails of Hanni and Foreman.
5. Hanni accuses Delta/Metron of being the hackers from point 1?
Kind of a leap to jump from point 4 to point 5. Metron's email policies may give up any reasonable privacy if Foreman used a Metron email account. Then again, the article is a bit light on details.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You missed a big point in 4 - Foreman believed something nefarious was going on, because among the emails shown to him by the Metron SVP were emails from and to Hanni from parties other than Foreman/Metron, as in:
"How did Metron come to be in possession of email correspondence between Hanni and other people?" Foreman, we get - he could have been using his work a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You make huge leaps in judgement in Lawsuits so you can justify Discovery to find out if your allegations are true. She will use the suit to get subpoenas to use against ISP's so if possible she can track the origin of the intrusion and other subpoenas so she can read emails exchanged by Delta and Memron to see if there was a conspiracy. Depending on the servers used the logs may indicate where the hacking came from. If it can be traced to a Delta or Metron IP address she's going to win a LOT of money, if n
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So you allege that the someone in step one sent the mails to the Senior VP of Metron just for the hell of it? In general, when you want to know who committed a crime, you look first at whoever benefited from it. Sometimes that doesn't pan out (and then you should look at who benefits if the obvious suspect is prosecuted), but the vast majority of the time it proves out.
Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:5, Informative)
Foreman said in the affidavit that Gaughan showed him what appeared to be "hacked and stolen e-mail communications" since the material involved the private e-mail accounts of both himself and Hanni.
Emphasis Added.
This isn't a case of the CEO having access to Foreman's company email account, this was his personal account where he was (apparently) sharing more information that the company wanted him to. He was subsequently fired because of those disclosures. Again, disclosures made through a private, non-company owned channel which the company somehow (presumably illegally) had access to.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Or the company simply was watching everything he was doing online and keylogged him or logged his internet traffic and thus never needed access to his private inbox.
Not sure how [il]legal THAT would be, though the computer is a company resource and presumably the employee's contract would inform him of the monitoring being done while he is using his computer there.
Re:Headline appears to be inaccurate. (Score:5, Informative)
TFA isn't that in-depth. Here's another source
http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/10/consumer-activist-kate-hanni-a.html [dallasnews.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's a Yahoo server, and it seems the domain is registered to Foreman himself.
Whois record for mmi-gov.com:
[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.melbourneit.com]
[Querying whois.melbourneit.com]
[whois.melbourneit.com]
Domain Name.......... mmi-gov.com
Creation Date........ 2004-09-08
Registration Date.... 2004-09-08
Expiry Date.......... 2011-09-08
Organisation Name.... Frederick J Foreman
Organisation Address. 14525 Chamberry C
people are spoiled these days (Score:2, Funny)
Who does she think she is, the Pope?!
Re:people are spoiled these days (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm old enough to remember the days of air travel before deregulation. It was very expensive and you had to dress well, but you were treated with respect. There were even SST sticker books for the kids.
It would be interesting to see an airline with only business class and first class. How long would it stay in business?
Parent
Air vs. Rail (Score:5, Interesting)
My parents are bringing our whole family to Cimarron, NM for Christmas, and already booked flights. To get there, I'm going to have to leave my home in the middle of the day and drive 25 miles to the airport. I'll have to get there an hour early and go through an intrusive security check. They'll also make me pay more for my bags at the airport. I'll then have to walk to the gate and wait there, then board in a line, then settle into my cramped seat and wait on the tarmac. I'll have to keep my electronics off until we reach cruising altitude. We'll then have to fly to the hub in Chicago, doing all of the previous stuff in reverse for landing and disembarkment, layover, and re-boarding. We'll then fly to Amarillo and do everything in reverse. I'll be landing in Amarillo after dark. Then I'll have to get a hotel because it'll be too late to reach Cimarron. So the next day I'll then be renting a car and driving 250 miles to Cimarron (no sizable airports near it) and get there in the afternoon. On the return trip, all of this will happen in reverse.
Well, I decided to check, and sure enough, there's an Amtrak stop 85 miles from my house and another 40 miles from Cimarron, with a direct line between them. So instead, I could leave my house at shortly before 6 in the evening, get on a train at around 7:30 with almost no waiting at the station, settle into whatever comfortable seat I want (I find rail travel to be *much* more comfortable than air travel), have a power outlet for my laptop, recline way back and sleep from 11 to 9 AM, get off at 11:30 AM, and get to Cimarron just after noon. With all costs added in, significantly cheaper, way more comfortable, saves six hours of driving, no hellish airport experiences, and faster. And way less environmental impact.
This may be an extreme case, but most people don't ever bother thinking to check to see whether a train can get them to their destination reasonably. A lot of people use the argument that as a less population-dense country, the US can't support rail. Well, population density arguments apply to *every* mode of public transportation, including air. Less population dense areas means fewer airports and fewer flights.
I loved riding the rails around Japan. Back in the US, get the speeds up and add more tracks, and at least I personally will ride them most places I go.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Well, population density arguments apply to *every* mode of public transportation, including air.
Air travel is not a public mode of transportation. And contrary to your assertion, it is a beneficiary of the lower population density of the US. For example, the low population density helps reduce air traffic clutter. And it meshes relatively well with the automobile. If you want to get same day travel anywhere in the US, then airlines are a good choice. It fills a niche that cars can't cover properly, that is fast travel over around a few hundred miles. Conversely, if you want to travel short distances w
Re: (Score:2)
Is it not "available for use by the general public, as opposed to modes for private use such as automobiles or vehicles for hire"?
Re:Air vs. Rail (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Air vs. Rail (Score:4, Insightful)
For the itinerary you found, an 18-hour trip, you should probably expect to add a random number of hours from 0 to 6 into your arrival time.
Agreed. But in fairness to Amtrak, you'd probably do well to add that kind of margin to a flight as well.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We have trains in the UK - for cities less than 100 miles away, it's definitely quicker than taking a plane, as the journey will only take around 3 hours, less time than checking in, security and picking up baggage at an airport. Though there are some disadvantages to long distance train journeys in the UK - some passengers, particularly oil workers, seem to treat trains like public bars, and get drunk before and after coming the oil rigs. Whenever this happens, the air conditioning will seem to be "broken"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I check, and without fail the train tends to far more expensive than a flight. Or, takes 12
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Trains are also much less vulnerable than planes. If there's a major malfunction on a plane, it crashes; a train just stops.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Certainly didn't happen in Japan. Train travel over there is still a dream -- even after the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Air vs. Rail (Score:5, Informative)
drive 25 miles to the airport.
40 KM, you are complaining about 40 KM. any decent city planning will have an express-way or rail line to the airport. 40 KM is less then an hour on a freeway and the middle of the day (10:00-15:00) is not peak hour.
Typical big city tunnel vision. I live in eastern *Iowa*. The airport is between a city of 60,000 and a city of 100,000. And that's pretty much it in the area apart from small towns, corn, soybeans, and hog farms. There are usually three active gates at the airport. There is no practical "peak hour".
Sit in a comfortable seat with individual IFE in the seat back plus laptop and USB power.
A seat like that costs ~$600-$900 cross-country, and wouldn't be available for my first leg at all. Who do you think you are, criticizing me for not taking the red eye and then talking about your first-class style seating? Not taking the red-eye is just a matter of booking well in advance and not insisting on direct flights. Perhaps you have unlimited money, but most of the world doesn't.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
About one quarter until they had to release their earnings and all the investors pulled out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
the last one Augured-In [wikipedia.org]
Looked like more of a mush to me.
Re: (Score:2)
The Concord comes to mind, but when the last one Augured-In just past the runway at Eiffel-Tower-X, Concord immediately went bankrupt.
Uh, no.
The Concorde which crashed in Paris was the first (and only) such crash of a Concorde. However, the Concorde fleet (operated by British Airways and Air France, there was no such company as Concord to go bankrupt) was aging and becoming increasingly expensive to operate between maintenance, fuel costs, and post 9/11 regulations. They did return to service for a short
Delta "clearly, obviously" innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Another story on the lawsuit currently circulating on the wires includes this nugget: "Through a spokesman, Delta denied that it was involved in any hacking. 'Obviously, the idea that Delta would hack into someone’s email is clearly without merit,' spokesman Trebor Banstetter wrote in an email."
Without prejudging the facts in the case, I'm not sure that "clearly" and "obviously" are adverbs that belong in any statement relating to wrongdoing on the part of a huge corporation.
Re:Delta "clearly, obviously" innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
But they certainly belong in the statements of anybody speaking on behalf of the corporation. The originators of these types of comments are always PR, marketing, legal and executive people. Which is also why I think that there a special place in hell that should be reserved for them.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
They only speak this way because our legal system awards ridiculous sums to people who claim a corporation did them wrong regardless of the real damages done. Hopefully there is an even better place in hell for these crazies that get rich off of bullshit lawsuits. The corps are just trying to protect themselves so they don't have to shut their doors tomorrow. Clearly you would understand if you have seen the shit companies get thrown at them. Maybe this case is a legit one, maybe it is not, but the corp
Re: (Score:2)
I've directly seen the lawsuit that are thrown at companies. I've also seen everyone in my list speak internally about cases I was intimately involved in. I found that that kind of talk was always there, regardless of how blatantly bad the situation might be.
As for your comment about irony, it is possible to dislike frivolous lawsuits as much as corporate double-speak. Just as an FYI.
Re:Delta "clearly, obviously" innocent (Score:4, Insightful)
"Obviously" has drifted into everyday corporate parlance, and it's very irritating to me. It is the audible equivalent of the long-running lose/loose spelling issue across the Internet -- I just notice it every time. We have sales people come in that are demonstrating products we've never seen before, and they talk about how their product can "obviously" perform some function. If it were obvious that it did all of these things, we wouldn't have them here. And it comes across as demeaning, because we didn't know those features were included, but by saying that they "obviously" were there and yet we were ignorant of them, it comes across as suggesting that we didn't do our homework or weren't bright enough to realize how superior their product was.
I have stopped one in mid-sentence and pointed out this problem. To his credit, he tried to avoid the word, and caught himself using it several more times, correcting himself each time. I should try that on more of them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Another story on the lawsuit currently circulating on the wires includes this nugget: "Through a spokesman, Delta denied that it was involved in any hacking. 'Obviously, the idea that Delta would hack into someone’s email is clearly without merit,' spokesman Trebor Banstetter wrote in an email."
He's quite right. There are outside companies you can pay to do that for you.
High Speed Rail (Score:4, Insightful)
Busy routes like LA-SF, LA-Phoenix, and Miami-Atlanta could easily be replaced by fast trains [wsj.com] and therefore take a lot of load off of our air and highway infrastructure at a relatively small price.
Re: (Score:2)
Californians thought so, that's why they approved the California High Speed Rail [ca.gov]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep. It's a $40 billion, 30-year project to build a train that will get from San Diego to San Francisco in under four hours.
Except that San Francisco has said that it can't terminate there, and land prices and structures may force it to go around the Los Angeles area. And there are stops on such a frequent basis that the train will be spending as much time in acceleration/deceleration as it will be at cruise speed, possibly extending the trip to as much as ten hours -- a little slower than the eight hours
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Train vs. plane is certainly an option, except for track right-of-way.
Train vs. car has major problems in that once you are there, you need your car to get around. Usually this is the whole reason for taking the car in the first place.
Then there is the right-of-way problem. Trains were replaced by trucks for most freight in the US around 1960 or 1970. I believe there was some major deregulation that changed the cost structure for trucking about that time. This pretty much ended passenger rail service in
Re: (Score:2)
Re:High Speed Rail (Score:4, Insightful)
High speed rail won't be filled. The cost to add another car to the train is completely marginal compared to the basic infrastructure needed to start service. With airlines, planes are the most expensive part of the process, and they don't scale. Every plane needs another crew, ground crew, etc.
Parent
For $11 Million (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You forgot about the part where you would also have to start an advocacy group and work hard enough to piss someone off enough to care about.
Re:For $11 Million (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot about the part where you would also have to start an advocacy group and work hard enough to piss someone off enough to care about.
Great point. What would I have to do for just $5 million?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Back to the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Larger corps have a few game plans:
1. Pay off and you stop.
2. Discredit with a "past", real, hyped or almost created.
3. Useless busy work via infiltration and re directing. Or a personality implosion of the groups eg COINTELPRO.
A fishing expedition? Looking for leaks, press contacts and members.
The planting of logger.
Re: (Score:2)
At first I thought it was a haiku, but then I counted syllables.
Momentary confusion on what you meant by "the planting of logger"... for some reason I thought it had something to do with environmental activists in the PacNW. Must be past my bedtime.
Anyway, I've cleaned up your haiku:
Email - leaky boat
A fishing expedition
Planted keylogger
The Industry (Score:5, Insightful)