Cybercrime: Online checks help track down stolen personal data

Potsdam (ots) - Have cybercriminals stolen my personal data and
made them freely available online so that others might also access
and misuse them? Internet users all over the world can now answer
this question using a free service from the Hasso Plattner Institute
for IT Systems Engineering (www.hpi.de) at the University of Potsdam
in Germany. All they need to do is visit https://sec.hpi.de and enter
their e-mail address. The system will then search the internet for
freely available personal data linked to them.

If names, passwords, account details or other personal data
associated with the e-mail address are found to be circulating the
web, the HPI will warn the user via e-mail and give him/her tips
about how to proceed. For security reasons, the institute will not
disclose the precise nature of the data.

The computer scientists who developed the service have named their
innovation the Identity Leak Checker. To date, researchers at the
university institute, which is funded by SAP co-founder Hasso
Plattner, have identified and analysed over 170 million sets of
personal data on the internet. Some 667,000 free checks have been
carried out since the service launched in Germany. In 80,000 of those
cases, the users had to be informed that they had been the victims of
identity theft.

"This type of warning system for stolen personal data circulating
the internet aims to make users more aware of the way they handle
their personal data," says Prof. Christoph Meinel, director of the
HPI. His department has also built a database for analysing IT
vulnerabilities (https://hpi-vdb.de). It integrates and combines
large quantities of data already available online about software
vulnerabilities and other security issues. The database currently
contains a good 61,000 pieces of information about weak spots that
exist in nearly 160,000 software programs from over 13,000
manufacturers.

The HPI database has recently started helping users run free
checks of their computers for identifiable weak spots that
cybercriminals often skilfully exploit for their attacks. The system
recognises the user's browser - including commonly used plugins - and
displays a list of known vulnerabilities. Plans to expand the
self-diagnosis system to cover other software installed on a computer
are currently in the pipeline.

Press contact at HPI:
presse@hpi.uni-potsdam.de,
Tel.: +49 (0)0331 5509 119 or
+49 (0)331 55 09-175