In Breaking In, Odette Annable, right, leads Contra Security colleagues on a mission. Images courtesy CBS
The hackers in new comedy Breaking In look as though they spend more time at the gym than they do hunched over a computer. Hollywood-handsome, these sitcom tech wizards may not walk the awkward nerd walk, but they do get to work in an office anchored by Captain Kirk’s Star Trek chair.
Debuting Wednesday, Breaking In centers on geeky high-tech consultants hired by clients to detect breaches in their security systems. In an era rife with institutional larceny, leaky intelligence and high-level buffoonery, it’s one of several TV shows that are in no mood to present espionage in an entirely serious light.
NBC’s Chuck, for example, casts an everyday schlub as a key player in intelligence operations. CBS’ new dramedy Chaos, titled in homage to Maxwell Smart’s nemeses at KAOS, offers up operatives practiced in the craft of cynical asides. FX Network’s animated Archer showcases doofus spies, while USA Network’s Burn Notice equips its former CIA agents with expertise in pyrotechnics, surveillance and wisecracks.
They all operate in the somber shadow of 24’s relentless antiterrorist Jack Bauer, the grim character whose exploits defined for nearly a decade the deadly earnest anxieties faced by Americans in the early post-9/11 years. But the strain of eternal vigilance took its toll by the time Fox’s action series ended its run last May. Now espionage programs lean on goofy, Get Smart-style attitude more than earnest patriotism.
It’s no wonder that prime time wants to look at the lighter side of spycraft: The real thing is too damn depressing. Last year, AMC’s Rubicon offered a deeply researched portrait of analysts at a secret think tank trying to decipher the daily deluge of “chatter” and satellite surveillance in order to pre-empt terrorist acts. Before the show got cancelled after a single season, the characters succumbed to alcoholic relapses, medication, suicide and vacant-eyed despair.
For audiences mired in a scam-fueled economy manipulated by con artists operating at the highest corporate levels — see Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job — a little levity goes a long way. Hence, the popularity of revenge fantasy Leverage: The TNT series keeps it light for each week’s mission conducted by witty rogues who turn the tables on big-money fraudsters.
In the case of Breaking In, the skullduggery is contracted out to the very private Contra Security, run by the mysterious Oz (played by Christian Slater). Oz recruits 27-year-old perpetual college student Cameron (Bret Harrison), who hacked his way into an extra-large dorm room by registering as twins. Blackmailed into working for Contra, Cameron rips off a car dealer as his first assignment.
Breaking In downplays the heists and skips over the “how’d they do that?” trickery. Instead, most of the show’s intermittently funny shtick draws on Cameron’s wobbly rapport with sexy safecracker Melanie, portrayed by Odette Annable (The Unborn) and sci-fi/fantasy freak Cash (Alphonso McAuley), a Dragon-Con devotee who believes his friends are “speaking Hobbit.”
Breaking In shares its Comic-Con worldview, and its three-dudes-and-a-babe casting template, with The Big Bang Theory. But the CBS geek-com starring Emmy-nominated Jim Parsons presents a more convincing group portrait of brainy misfits, as does BBC America’s The IT Crowd.
“Breaking In is actually a mouthpiece for my geeky agenda,” the show’s co-creator Adam F. Goldberg (one of the writers of Fanboys) said in a statement. “Stuff my wife won’t let me talk about outside the house: Star Wars, Goonies, Tron, Lord of the Rings.”
Still, geek cred is beside the point for Breaking In and its frothy ilk. Cybercrime is no laughing matter — just ask the nearly 2 million people who this week learned their private records were compromised by hackers who hit Epsilon Data Management. Rather than stinging viewers with grim, headline-sourced procedurals, the espionage lite genre suits these data-addled times with its laugh-to-keep-from-crying sensibility.
Breaking In debuts Wednesday at 9:30 p.m./8:30 p.m. Central on Fox.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two men have been charged with insider trading based on information stolen from three of the most prominent U.S. law firms specializing in mergers and acquisitions, federal prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the information was stolen from the law firms Wilson Sonsini Goodrich Rosati; Cravath Swaine Moore LLP, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher Flom LLP, all of which had employed the defendant Matthew Kluger, a lawyer.
Kluger and co-defendant Garrett Bauer, a trader, reaped more than $32.2 million of profit from their 17-year conspiracy to invest in a variety of stocks, such as technology companies McAfee Inc, Sun Microsystems Inc and 3Com Inc, according to a complaint filed with the federal court in Newark, New Jersey.
Prosecutors said Kluger regularly stole information about anticipated corporate mergers and acquisitions from his law firms. They said he would then pass the information to an unnamed co-conspirator, who would then give it to Bauer with instructions on how many shares to buy for the three of them.
The pair invested more than $109 million in the scheme, which ran from 1994 through this March, the complaint said.
The news follows dozens of arrests since October 2009 relating to federal allegations of insider trading focused on hedge funds. One-time billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, who founded the hedge fund firm Galleon Group, is on trial in Manhattan in Wall Street’s biggest insider trading case in two decades.
Prosecutors said Bauer worked at a variety of trading firms, most recently at Lighthouse Financial Group from about June 2009 through roughly August 2010.
Lighthouse also once employed the broker Michael Kimelman, who was arrested in 2009 in connection with the hedge fund insider trading probe. Kimelman has been represented in that case by lawyers at Wilson Sonsini, court records show.
Kluger lives in Oakton, Virginia, and Bauer in New York. It is unclear whether they have lawyers for their defense.
Kluger did not immediately return a call to his home seeking comment. Bauer could not immediately be reached for comment. Wilson Sonsini did not immediately return a request for comment. Representatives of Cravath and Skadden had no immediate comment.
17 COUNTS
Prosecutors charged Kluger and Bauer with 17 counts, including 11 counts of insider trading, four counts of obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit insider trading, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The case was built in part on phone wiretaps that prosecutors said show the defendants’ conspiracy.
Prosecutors said that in recent years, Kluger, Bauer and the co-conspirator would try to avoid detection by using pay phones and prepaid cellphones that they would later throw out.
They also said Bauer in late 2009 spent more than $7 million of proceeds from the scheme to buy two homes: a $6.65 million condominium on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and an $875,000 home in Boca Raton, Florida.
According to the complaint, Kluger worked from December 2005 until this March 11 as a senior associate in Wilson Sonsini’s office in Washington, D.C., where his annual salary was about $290,000. Kluger worked at Cravath from 1994 to 1997, and at Skadden from 1998 to 2001, the complaint said.
U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey, and officials from the FBI and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are expected to hold a press conference on the arrests later Wednesday.
The case is U.S. v. Bauer et al, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 11-mag-03536.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Dena Aubin; editing by Dave Zimmerman)
Global security firm Symantec also agreed that such attacks are on the rise. “Cases of corporate espionage are certainly increasing in India.
“By persistent attack on the company, cyber criminals get access to intellectual property of the firms. Such data is potentially used by competition,” said Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President, India Product Operations, Symantec.
He added that other than losing important data, the attacks have financial implications too.
According to a study by Symantec’s State of Enterprise Security Survey 2010, the average revenue lost by Indian enterprises due to cyber attacks was over Rs. 58 lakh. Image: Corporate espionage is increasing in India. Photographs: Reuters
Seems Google is getting information about senior employees being recruited by Twitter, in order to make counter offers, TechCrunch reported.
Google offered about $150 million to keep two senior product managers offered the chief product role at Twitter earlier this year (though Business Insider claims those numbers are “tens of millions of dollars off” — but huge numbers regardless of the exact dollar figures).
“There’s lots to say about the statement Google is making with these counteroffers. “Don’t mess with us,” comes to mind. As well as “If you’re a Google employee and you aren’t out interviewing at Facebook, Twitter or Zynga you are a moron.”
Regardless, the fact that large fortunes are being handed out to mid level technical managers is somewhat of a red flag in general. That kind of money is usually reserved for founders of companies that make it to IPO. Actually, most IPO founders make substantially less than that.” TechCrunch reported.
Meanwhile, the information Google is getting access to suggests someone at Twitter is sharing information. Twitter had a problem with leaked info a couple of years ago when their internal strategy meeting notes were made public and Google may have started taking notice.
“Much of the discussion at Twitter meetings throughout the past six months revolved around dealing with Google and Facebook. In a March 13, 2009 management meeting, for example, during a discussion of a search deal with Google, the fear is expressed that “Google would kick our ass at finding the good tweet.” But almost immediately afterwards, someone asks, “Can we do to Google what Google has done to others?”
BUFFALO, N.Y., March 21 (UPI) — A New York state judge has barred appliance parts firm 1st Source Servall from soliciting business from a rival firm’s client list due to corporate espionage.
State Supreme Court Justice John Michalek, in a 21-page injunction said, “Unrebutted evidence now demonstrates” two former Marcone Supply company employees “intentionally took and/or received” customer information from their former employer, The Buffalo News reported Monday.
With the list in hand, Marcone employee Mark Creighton resigned from his job April 20, 2010, and “within six days became Servall’s vice president of sales for the Northeast Region,” the judge wrote.
In addition, the judge said Creighton admitted he destroyed memory sticks and a computer hard drive that contained information about 3,300 Marcone customers.
The judge’s injunction is limited to the top 640 clients on Marcone’s customer list. Marcone attorney James Donathen called the situation “serious” and “a classic case of corporate espionage.”
Marcone lost $12 million worth of business in 2010 because of the theft, the company said.
“I think the main reason they’re suing Servall is that Servall is No. 2, and a lot of customers are better off with Servall,” Servall attorney B. Kevin Burke Jr. said.
“Customers are better served if there is competition,” Burke said.
