Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Industrial Espionage in Brazil

Brazil - Brazilian police said on Tuesday they were treating the theft of strategic data from Brazil's state-run energy giant Petrobras as a case of industrial espionage.

Petrobras confirmed last Thursday that four laptops and two RAM memory chips were stolen in late January from a transport container owned by the U.S. oil-field service company Halliburton, a longtime Petrobras business partner.

The data came from a drilling ship in the Santos basin, where a huge new oil reserve was recently discovered. The find could make Brazil one of the world's major oil producers...

Caetano confirmed it was not the first case of data robbery from Petrobras. The company reported similar cases to police about a year ago but said they did not involve important information.

He faulted the security in the latest case. (more)