Last month it was revealed that digital photos of “fewer than 100,000” travellers and vehicle license plates, captured as they made their way through a border crossing, had been stolen by hackers from the network of a company subcontracting for the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
That wasn’t good.
Then it was revealed that the company concerned, Perceptics, shouldn’t have had the data on its network in the first place and that it had been copied onto their systems without the knowledge or authorisation or the CBP.
That definitely wasn’t good.
And then it came to light that the hackers hadn’t just scarpered off with the CBP data, but also some 400 GB of other files from Peceptics’ network including databases, spreadsheets, HR records, business plans, financial figures, presnetations, personal information, and even some Spice Girls MP3s.
Oh dear oh dear.
A screenshot of a Perceptics presentation made for CBP. Faces blurred by Motherboard. Source: Motherboard
How could things look any worse for Perceptics?
Well, as Drew Harwell at The Washington Post reports, the CBP has now suspended license plate-scanning company Perceptics from federal contracts:
The longtime maker of license-plate scanners and other surveillance equipment used along the U.S. border was suspended Tuesday from federal contracting by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, who cited “evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity,” federal records show.
The rare punishment te ..
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