Extensive Spying Found At HP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091901632.html
Extensive Spying Found At HP
Feb. Report Sent to 4 Senior Executives
By Ellen Nakashima and Yuki Noguchi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 20, 2006; D01
The
Hewlett-Packard Co. spying effort that has sparked criminal
investigations was wide-ranging and included physical surveillance,
photographs and spyware sent via e-mail, and it also targeted wives and
other relatives of HP board members and reporters, according to a
consultant's report prepared for the company.
The Feb. 10 report, obtained by The Washington Post, summarized in eight
pages how investigators, to identify an internal leak of confidential HP
information, surreptitiously followed HP board member George A. Keyworth
II while he was giving a lecture at the University of Colorado. They
watched his home in Piedmont, Calif. They used photographs of a reporter
to see if the reporter met with him. And they tried to recover a laptop
computer stolen from him in Italy so they could analyze its
contents.
The report, prepared by a consulting firm in Needham, Mass., hired to
investigate leaks to the media, was sent to four HP executives, including
HP's ethics director. That suggests that senior HP employees were aware
of the spying tactics used as early as February. The report was sent to
Kevin Hunsaker, senior counsel and HP ethics director; Frederick P.
Adler, an HP information security employee; Vince Nye, a senior
investigator; and Anthony Gentilucci, an HP global investigations manager
in Boston.
The report, prepared by Security Outsourcing Solutions Inc., detailed
extensive efforts it supervised to obtain calling records for home,
office and cellphones and fax lines of various HP board members and
reporters covering the company.
The report described how investigators sent an e-mail to a reporter for
the online technology publication Cnet.com that contained spyware
software in an attached file. If opened, the attachment was designed to
install itself on her computer and track every keystroke.
The extent to which the Silicon Valley computer company would go to
identify the person who spoke anonymously to a reporter about
confidential company operations has scandalized corporate America,
launched federal and state investigations, and outraged members of
Congress, who have called a Sept. 28 hearing on the matter.
Larry Neal, a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce investigative
subcommittee, said yesterday that outgoing HP chairman Patricia C. Dunn,
general counsel Ann Baskins and outside counsel Larry Sonsini are
expected to testify. Ronald R. DeLia, owner of Security Outsourcing
Solutions and the author of the confidential HP report, is also expected
to appear but may choose to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against
self-incrimination, said Neal, the deputy staff director for the full
committee.
Two others asked to appear before the committee -- Gentilucci, the Boston
HP global investigator, and Joseph DePante, owner of a private
investigative firm in Florida, have not responded to the committee's
request, Neal said.
The House committee has also requested that HP turn over documents
related to the investigation and has received "several thousand
pages" so far, Neal said.
Another document reviewed by The Post revealed that HP's ethics chief in
January was plotting ways to obtain information on board members and was
being warned off those tactics by a colleague. On Jan. 28, Hunsaker asked
Adler whether there was any way to "lawfully get text message
content." Hunsaker wrote about HP board member Thomas Perkins,
"Apparently, Perkins almost never uses uses his cell phone, and
instead does just about everything via text message."
In an e-mail reply, Adler told Hunsaker "[e]ven if we could legally
obtain the records, which we can't unless we either pay the bill or get
consent, I would highly suspect text messaging records are not kept due
to volume and expense. The only other means is through real time
interception, an avenue not open to us."
HP has conducted two internal leak investigations in the past two years,
the first dubbed "Kona 1" and running from March 2005 through
the summer of 2005. The second, "Kona 2," ran from January to
May 2006, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Kona 2 was prompted by a story by Cnet reporter Dawn Kawamoto about the
firm's long-term strategy, and from the February consultant's report, it
is clear that HP focused fairly early -- by mid-February -- on board
members Keyworth and Perkins. Keyworth has since admitted to leaking
information and resigned from the board.
According to DeLia's report, investigators obtained subscriber
information on at least 240 of more than 300 phone numbers sought, and
was in the process of analyzing them, including the records of phone
calls from Keyworth's New Mexico house, to and from his fax and
cellphone, as well as his new wife's home and cellphones. Similarly, the
firm obtained records of Perkins's home phone calls from Jan. 4 to Jan.
26, including 12 U.S. calls, three to Britain and two other international
calls.
According to the report, board members, reporters and their spouses,
particularly at Cnet, were subject to broad background checks, including
details of where they worked, attended school and lived. Investigators
hired through DeLia's firm obtained call information on Kawamoto's home
phone, cellphone and a cellphone believed to belong to Kawamoto's
husband's. They conducted "[e]xtensive Media and Internet Content
Research" on Cnet reporter Tom Krazit and his wife.
The call information was obtained by a technique sometimes called
"pretexting," or impersonating someone else to obtain their
phone records, HP said in a Securities and Exchange Commission
filing.
The investigators also began an e-mail exchange with Kawamoto "under
the pretext of . . . . develop[ing] a dialogue with the reporter."
Then, he noted, on Feb. 9, an e-mail was sent to Kawamoto with an
attached file with "tracking capability," or software that logs
keystrokes in real time.
Investigators experienced in corporate work said the technique, called
"keylogging," was out of bounds in this case. "I've been
doing this a long time and I've never heard or seen of investigators
doing those nefarious types of tactics," said Robert Seiden,
president of Fortress Global Investigations Corp. in New York. "To
get access to a reporter's computer raises a whole slew of privacy and
legal issues."
Kawamoto did not reply to phone messages and a Cnet spokeswoman declined
to comment. Krazit also declined to comment.
Staff researcher Rena Kirsch contributed to this report.
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