Monthly Archives: April 2011

DocMatch detects plagiarism

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S.A.F.E. has recently announced the release of DocMatch, a new tool for comparing all kinds of documents to find plagiarism. Our unique, patented technology has proved very useful for finding copied computer code in court. We decided to apply our technology to general documents like articles, papers, and novels. There have been a few cases where we built custom applications to compare written engineering specifications. The results were very useful. In one case, finding copied but modified software specifications gave clues that showed how one company copied another’s software.

DocMatch can be licensed as the full version or the LT version. The full version is the professional tool. It creates a database containing matching elements between two sets of documents. The full version can automatically search the Internet for all references to commonly used words and filter them from the database. Also, sophisticated statistics can be extracted from the database. The full version costs $150 for a one-year license. The LT version produces an easy-to-read HTML report showing words, sentences, and paragraphs that are identical or similar in every pair of documents. The LT version costs $30 for a one-year license. Register to download your copy here.

IP theft is becoming the new target for cyberthieves

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Antivirus company McAfee and R&D company SAIC recently published a report entitled Underground Economies, a study of corporate IP theft. According to the study, many cyberthieves now see stealing IP as more profitable than credit card theft and identity theft. According to the study:

In the past, cybercriminals targeted personal information such as credit cards and social security numbers, which were then sold on the black market. Now, these criminals understand that there is much greater value in selling a company’s proprietary information to competitors and foreign governments. For example, a company’s legal documents can fetch far more money than a list of customer credit cards.

The cyber underground economy has shifted its focus to the theft of corporate intellectual capital–the new currency of  cybercrime. Intellectual capital encompasses all the value that a company derives from its intellectual property including trade  secrets, marketing plans, research and development findings and even source code. For example, Operation Aurora, a targeted attack on Google and at least 30 other companies, represented a sophisticated attack designed to steal intellectual capital.

Some of the more interesting findings are:

  • Theft of corporate intellectual property is “the new currency of cybercrime.”
  • Some governments support or even conduct theft of trade secrets. Forrester Research estimates that corporate IP is twice as valuable as custodial data such as credit card information and customer and medical data.
  • Cloud-based services are not only a new target for cyber criminals, but also but extensive but inexpensive resources into their hands
    for carrying out cybercrimes.
  • Data breaches, or the credible threat of a data breach, stopped or slowed a merger, acquisition, or new product rollout at one
    fourth of organizations surveyed.
  • Yet only a quarter of organizations conduct forensic analysis after a breach or attempted breach.
  • Organizations reported that IP was most often leaked or stolen by their own employees.

Read the entire study here.

As an ironic side note, the day that this report was released, security researchers announced that McAfee’s own website has serious vulnerabilities. Read that article here.