I was reading Ellen Messmer's report today about the security incident over at Lending Tree. Yeah, I know another information breach by insiders case, BFD.  But I think there is something different about this one.  From what I am reading this is more a case of corporate espionage than the usual hackers for fraud and financial gain type of deal.  For a long time now we have been hearing from people like Bruce Schneier in this article talk about the front in security moving from dealing with script kiddies working for kicks to organized cybercriminal gangs that are in it for financial gain. Mostly the gain is about identity theft and gaining access to funds fraudulently.

In the Lending Tree case though there was not evidently a motive to use the ill begotten information for identity theft or fraud.  Rather they represented Glengary, Glen Ross leads.  That is the names, contacts and qualifications of people looking for mortgages.  A mortgage company would consider these leads more valuable than gold, more valuable even that gasoline!  So to my mind this is more a case of corporate espionage where a company that is competitive to Lending Tree infiltrated their networks through people, rather than technology to gain access to their corporate crown jewels. 

This sort of stealing your competitors information has been going on for decades, well before computers and cybercrime were around.  However, this is a great example of some things not going out of style.  Obtaining your competitors information is a great motive, computers are just the container where the information is kept.  Sort of like cracking a safe.  It is always easier getting into a safe if you are given the combination, than if you have to crack it yourself. 

Yet another front in the cybercrime war that security folks need to be on guard for!