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Thieves Take the Cake 91

Posted by samzenpus from the just-eat-it dept.
Two very hungry German couriers ate a fruit cake destined for a German newspaper and in its place mailed a box of credit card data. The data including names, addresses and card transactions ended up at the Frankfurter Rundschau daily. The mix-up triggered an alarm, and police advised credit card customers with Landesbank Berlin to check their accounts for inconsistencies. Fruitcake must be different in Germany for people to want to use it as something other than a paperweight.

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Thieves Take the Cake More

Thieves Take the Cake

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  • Whatever. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cromar ( 1103585 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @05:40PM (#26206035)
    Whatever, fruit cake is delicious. Just don't buy the cheap, sucky grocery store kind and you will be in for a treat or find a recipe and make some...

    • Very true.

    • It really depends if it has the fruits that you like or not. Some people don't like x fruit thus having it in the cake makes them dislike it and in turn all fruit cakes

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Whatever, fruit cake is delicious. Just don't buy the cheap, sucky grocery store kind and you will be in for a treat or find a recipe and make some...

      Fruit cake is handy stuff. My dog is still using the piece from last year as a chew toy and I used the rest to weather strip the windows. I asked for more this year so I could redo the doors as well what with fuel oil prices so high and all. It also comes in handy to plug mouse holes with. It's the only thing I've found they won't chew on.

    • This wasn't fruit cake. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22, 2008 @06:03PM (#26206269)

      If you read TFA, it was stollen [google.com], a whole different thing. And while stollen may have its own problems (it's something like five hundred calories fora small slice) it's damn tasty.

    • I agree good fruitcake is moist, soft and delicious. The bakery I get mine from soaks the fruit in Brandy a long time before they bake the cake.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by goatpunch ( 668594 )

      The stuff that passes for 'fruitcake' in the US/Canada is just sad, half the replies to this story are just stating how sucky that artificial insubstantial crap is.

      This stuff was the ultimate fruit cake, German Stollen:

      Stollen > British Fruitcake > North American Fruitcake

    • It's far superior to 'fruit cake'. I get thanked for giving it. I don't ever give fruit cake, it's an insult.

      http://www.rejiquar.com/Food/stollen.html [rejiquar.com]

    • I agree. I don't understand the fruitcake meme -- well-made fruitcake is delicious.
  • Is this why DHL is pulling out of the US? If they hire couriers who like fruitcake in Germany, what they must be like in the US!

  • idle? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Okay, seriously: What the hell is the point of idle if you're just going to post fluff in all the other sections anyway?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      This is far from fluff. It's actually a security issue that has some "funny" (ymmv) outcome.

      These couriers ate a stollen (NOT a fruitcake!) that was supposed to go to party A, and to make it less obvious, they took a package from party B and delivered it to A instead, thinking that whether they get 4 or 5 parcels won't make the difference. Well, problem is that this "misdelivered" parcel contained the very personal bank account data of people on microfiche. This raises a few rather interesting questions.

      Fir

      • Financial houses are very conservative, and very prone to sticking with "proven" systems until some massive flaw forces them to change.

        • Financial houses are very conservative, and very prone to sticking with "proven" systems until some way to spend less money convinces them to change.

          There, fixed.

          There are so many things that are flawed in the way financial houses operate, online banking being the most obvious one. But as long as the damages don't outweigh the cost of changing, it's going to stay this way.

  • because.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by db10 ( 740174 )
    German couriers like to have their cake and eat it too.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by db10 ( 740174 )
      also in Russia cake eats German couriers.

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Also, pretty much everywhere, old gets meme.

    • Eat their cake and have it too.

      One could write a manifesto about the abuses that phrase has suffered.

  • Hating poorly made mass market stuff sure; but that's not specific to fruitcake. Anything that's overproduced and sits for too long will be unpalatable.

    Fruitcake is heavy and sweet, sure, but that's why it's a decadent holiday treat rather than an all-year item. I love a good fruitcake!

  • Stollen! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22, 2008 @05:55PM (#26206197)

    It wasn't fruitcake, it was Christstollen. And no, that's not the same, despite what Wikipedia falsely claims.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by carleton ( 97218 )

      Grr... wish I had modpoints... there's about 3 light years of difference between fruitcake and stollen...

    • Re:Stollen! (Score:5, Funny)

      by himizu ( 1435467 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @06:33PM (#26206501)
      You mean, the cake is a lie?
      • Mod parent up. When taken in conjunction with GP's post, this has got to be better than the million other Portal memes this story is bound to generate.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Adrian Lopez ( 2615 )

      Christstollen? Gestohlen!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Briareos ( 21163 ) *

        Christstollen? Gestohlen!

        *imagines your average English speaker trying to pronounce that*

        Gesundheit!

        (Ja ja, ich geh' ja schon... :P)

        np: Tocotronic - Neues Vom Trickser (Tocotronic)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Trogre ( 513942 )

      Which Wikipedia will no doubt now correctly claim. Thanks for fixing it!

    • It's a cake with fruit in it, and no, it's not a fruitcake. Not the fruitcake everyone's thinking of, anyway.

      FWIW, Aldi [aldifoods.com] sells imported German stollen around Christmastime. They're pretty good, and they'll certainly dispose you of the idea that stollen are fruitcakes.

  • For what it's worth, the "classic" fruitcake is one from the Collin Street Bakery [collinstreet.com] in Corsicana, Texas, between Dallas and Houston. Selling points include:

    * Hand-picked Golden sweet pineapple and lush papaya, from our farms in Costa Rica.
    * Ripe, red cherries from Oregon and Washington State.
    * Pure clover honey, plump golden raisins.
    * Refrigerated, the DeLuxe stays moist and delicious for months.

    Put it in the fridge, you'll get around to eating it... someday.

    But the most important thing about a Collin Street

  • Wow. Hoax? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @06:06PM (#26206295) Homepage

    I actually had to RTFA because I could not figure out what on earth this is about. So, two couriers decide to steal a cake sent to a newspaper. To COVER the theft, they replaced it with a package intended to a bank, without even opening it. That package happened to contain microfilmed (?!) of transactions.
    This must be a hoax, the sheer stupidity of "hiding" a CAKE theft with a second theft. Then banks sending around transactions and customer data in MICROFILMS????
    Am I missing something, or is this just a hoax?

    • Re:Wow. Hoax? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @06:16PM (#26206371) Homepage

      No. It is for real. That's what actually happened. The couriers stole the fruit cake, and to cover it, they took one of six packages intended for a bank and relabelled it with the address sticker of the newspaper.

      • Is it just me, or was alerting a newspaper to their theft the wrong way to keep it secret?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by burni ( 930725 )
      Don't joke about microfilms!

      For archiving over a long term they have some unbeatable pro's

      (+) 100years+
      (+) lowtech data retrival (even Gallileo could extract information!)
      (+) burn it when the deadline is met (faster & more secure than erasing tapes)

      (-) slow data retrival (but this is just data which has to be archived, and won't be accessed
      anymore)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )

        (-) slow data retrival (but this is just data which has to be archived, and won't be accessed
        anymore)

        Just file it in /dev/null

        (+) infinite space
        (+) very low space/power requirements
        (+) secure

        (-) if you say it won't be accessed, you better mean it. ;)

    • I actually had to RTFA because I could not figure out what on earth this is about. So, two couriers decide to steal a cake sent to a newspaper. To COVER the theft, they replaced it with a package intended to a bank, without even opening it. That package happened to contain microfilmed (?!) of transactions.
      This must be a hoax, the sheer stupidity of "hiding" a CAKE theft with a second theft. Then banks sending around transactions and customer data in MICROFILMS????
      Am I missing something, or is this just a ho

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

      It must be a hoax. Everyone knows there is just ONE fruitcake in the entire world, and it's been passed from one unlucky victim to another for centuries.

      • In the version I know it's a box of chocolate candy. And it ends with the words "I want to inform the world that the box has been removed from circulation. Someone will have to buy a new one."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )

      It's not entirely a hoax. Actually, bank data surfaced at a newspaper. Actually, said newspaper wrote a story about it. Actually, the whole country was up in arms about bank data being stolen.

      Whether or not it is credible that a bank is delivering account data on microfiche (to whom, anyway?), whether or not it is credible that two couriers steal a stollen (ya know, they ain't so terribly expensive and stealing a cake means you're FIRED, and I only write it in bold because I don't want to bug you with an H1

  • What a sweet security breach story!

  • Aghh!
    The cake is a lie!

    Well, this should take care of the rest of the German's personal finances that did not get sold to the undercover journalists earlier this winter [slashdot.org].

    It must of been one hell of a good fruitcake, but I wonder if it was worth the risk for the mail person.

  • Fruitcake missing! Non-film at 11. Review of mental hospital institutions at 11:30.
  • WTF ./

    Honestly, are you trying to destroy your rep? How in the F*^% is this related to IT?

    And it's not even the stupid articles on the front page (I never even got around to turning idle off), it's WHY... what are you TRYING (and failing) to accomplish? I know sourceforge has stated that they wanted to increase revenues, but they know this will just piss off the users and do nothing of the sort, right... right? I'm a geek, I want to know WHY. Will you answer me, or are you just looking to generat

    • Does anyone know of any options to /. that are as cool (minus the idle garbage, of course)?

      Yes, but if we told you then we would have to put up with you over there too.

    • Since when did /. (or indeed ./ ) have to stick to articles "related to IT"?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Qzukk ( 229616 )

        Since when did /. (or indeed ./ ) have to stick to articles "related to IT"?

        Presumably when they posted this under the IT section.

        That said, of course this has to do with IT: those accounts are data, and this is why you shouldn't mail things unencrypted.

        • That said, of course this has to do with IT: those accounts are data, and this is why you shouldn't mail things unencrypted.

          Ok, I was wondering the same thing, but that explanation actually made sense. TFS said nothing about that, though.

      • heh, didn't even realize I posted ./

        Must've been trying to do something in my local dir there :)

        This article is posted under the IT: section. There are different /. sections and stories are prefixed with [sectionName:]storyName. This is under the IT section. So, when I go to an IT section, I'd hope it would be related (at least obliquely) to IT, but this story is clearly an idle: section.

        My gripe is that they are miscategorizing these stories on purpose to subvert the settings of those who have
    • Yea, this is seriously pretty sad...
    • RF, you've been around slashdot for what... 2-3 years? Not that I'm an oldtimer, though I lurked AC for a couple years before registering...

      Slashdot is not "News for Nerds, Stuff that is Limited to One Person's Opinion of Stuff that Matters". From all I've read and seen, Slashdot is "News for Nerds, Stuff We Think is Interesting".

      Lately it seems it's also "Stuff the Corporate Overlord Thinks Will Draw Viewers", which is what you may be getting at.

      At any rate, if you haven't noticed, data security has

      • The #1 best thing to do with content that you don't like on Slashdot? Ignore it.

        I'd argue that's probably the #2 best thing to do. IMHO the first would be to try and draw attention to the fact that putting idle stuff under different categories is not going to be popular with most viewers (and if I'm wrong, I'm sure the downmods won't be shy).

        I'd say if I didn't say anything, ultimately got frustrated with the changes and left without saying anything, I'd not only be doing myself a disservice, but /. as well.

        With all that being said, I don't disagree with your comment and ultim

  • I have never purchased a actual good fruit cake, I feel so let down by the baking profession every time. You really have to bake them yourself, if you can track down an actual good recipe or have one in your family.

    Perhaps this is a translation issue and there was no fruitcake mailed. It is perhaps what the hacker that owned the couriers tracking system called himself.

    • Well, it's Christstollen.
      It's not even difficult to make.

      125gr of currants
      100gr of candied lemon peel (cut)
      100gr of candied orange peel (cut)
      300gr of sultanas (maybe a bit more, but 300 is normally OK)
      250gr of rough-cut almods

      soak in rum for 1 or two days. Not too much rum, just so that the fruit can soak-up everything.

      1.2kg of flour, 200gr of sugar, 4x40gr of yeast, 250ml warm (warm, not hot!) milk

      take about one kilo or 900gr of the flour, put it in a large bowl and create a pit in the middle, put the ye

  • Well, it may be a funny story at first sight, but don't forget that this stupid behavior by the bank (not the courier, banks shouldn't send critical information by normal courier) led to a serious data leak.
    Thankfully, the cake was for the chief editor of a newspaper, so the credit card records didn't fall in the hands of someone who'd make a profit out of them.

  • Police have learned that the couriers have in fact stolen *forty* cakes. According to experts, that's as many as four tens. "And that's terrible," said a spokesman for the German police.

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