I read with interest the story published yesterday about the San Francisco man arrested "on 53 felony counts of fraud and forgery for stealing hundreds of credit card numbers, many of which he stored on an iPod."

"Lee had been staying for months at first-class hotels on Nob Hill, using stolen identities and credit cards, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. Lee was arrested outside the Grosvernor Suites hotel after signing a receipt for the delivery of computers he ordered using the name of a San Francisco attorney whose wallet was reported stolen from his Mercedes a few days earlier.  A subsequent search of Lee's hotel room turned up a list of more than 500 names and credit card numbers, police said.  Among the names were Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader in Congress, and LaRae Quy, spokeswoman for the FBI's San Francisco office."

I love my iPod...I'm trying to figure out the possible scenarios for how the information could have most easily been stored on the iPod...and the other scenarios for which the data could have been first input to his computer and then transferred to the iPod...very easy but very slow if he input one at a time from stolen wallets and purses.  A good possibility is that he was able to connect to a network and copy the data from an inadequately secured folder or file on the network...

This recalls the iPod slurping discussed a few weeks ago and how easily a software tool created by Abe Usher could be used to copy, quite quickly, files from a network if an iPod is attached to the network.

Perhaps Lee was actually able to connect to networks with his iPod and use this tool, or something similar?  Perhaps the hotel's network?  Perhaps through a wireless AP?

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information security
credit card fraud
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identity theft