There were several reports over the weekend regarding INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble's disclosure at the 1st INTERPOL Information Security Conference in Hong Kong that his identity was stolen off his Facebook page.
According to this story appearing in London's The Daily Mail, Secretary General Noble:
"... revealed that two fake accounts were created in his name and used to find the details of highly dangerous criminals."
"The embarrassing security breach saw one of the impersonators used the false profile to obtain information on fugitives convicted of serious crimes including rape and murder."
Secretary General Noble elaborated in his speech at the security conference:
"Just recently INTERPOL’s Information Security Incident Response Team discovered two Facebook profiles attempting to assume my identity as INTERPOL’s Secretary General."
"One of the impersonators was using this profile to try to obtain information on fugitives targeted during our recent Operation Infra-Red. This Operation was bringing investigators from 29 member countries at the INTERPOL General Secretariat to exchange information on international fugitives and lead to more than 130 arrests in 32 countries."
Operation Infra-Red (International Fugitive Round-Up and Arrest–Red Notices) ran from May through July of 2010. You can read more about it here.
Secretary General Noble was also quoted in the Daily Mail story as saying that a major concern of his now was terrorists deciding to move to cyber attacks instead of physical attacks:
"Terrorists may prefer the mass media coverage of destroyed commuter trains, buildings, brought down, to the anonymous collapse of the banking system. But until when?"
Good question.
Robert N. Charette is a Contributing Editor to IEEE Spectrum and an acknowledged international authority on information technology and systems risk management. A self-described “risk ecologist,” he is interested in the intersections of business, political, technological, and societal risks. Charette is an award-winning author of multiple books and numerous articles on the subjects of risk management, project and program management, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A Life Senior Member of the IEEE, Charette was a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Golden Core Award in 2008.
