Cloned business and law enforcement vehicles used as a smuggling tool

(Picture of "toy" Border Patrol vehicle courtesy of SpongeBob22 at Flickr)It appears that the criminals exploiting our notoriously "not very secure" Southern border have a new tool in their arsenal.Vehicles bearing fake logos of the Border Patrol, Fedex, DirecTV and everyone's favorite source of outsourced goods, "Walmart" are being used to smuggle...

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$7 billion rogue trader turns himself in

The $7 billion rogue trader has turned himself in to French authorities.Nicola Clark of the NY Times just reported:Jérôme Kerviel, a former trader at Société Générale, surrendered to the police on Saturday as investigators looked into what had caused the bank, one of Europe’s largest, to lose more than $7 billion.When the story hit the wires, Kerviel's attorney stated that he would be available to speak with judicial authorities.The $7 billion question for the authorities and the rest of us us:The bank’s management has come under increasing pressure...

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Scientology taken on by anon hackers

There seems to be a growing controversy with Scientology recently. Not sure why, it didn't exactly appear on the scene yesterday. Besides that most of us are supposed to believe in "freedom of religion." Well .... I guess the word "most" doesn't necessarily mean "all?"A lot of people seem to be harmed in the name of religion! When this occurs there seems to be a lot of disagreement on what the "word" actually is.I try to be one of those people, who believes in freedom of religion so I'm not going to come to any conclusions in this post and merely...

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Kidnapping scams head North of the Border

Over the years, I've heard stories of illegal immigrants having family members kidnapped, or held in safe (?) houses until they pay up. Sometimes the kidnapping occurs in Mexico -- where kidnappings are common -- and the illegal aliens are compelled to wire money for the release of their loved one(s).Dane Schiller of the Houston Chronicle recently wrote a interesting article about this with a slightly different twist. In this article, the alleged victim fakes the kidnapping and attempts to collect the money, herself.From Dane's article:A chilling...

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The $7 Billion Fraudster

(Photo courtesy of Zorg at Flickr)Jerome Kerviel -- who may have cost his employer somewhere around $7 billion -- might prove that no security system is flawless, especially when the person compromising it has been given access to it.Molly Moore of the Washington Post reports:For five years, Jérôme Kerviel toiled in the back offices of Societe Generale,...

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Symantec reports sighting drive-by pharming in the wild

We hear a lot about phishing, but we don't see a whole lot written about pharming. According to a blog post on Symantec's blog by Zulfikar Ramzan, we might start seeing pharming mentioned a lot more than it has been in the past.According to Zuftikar, the first instances of drive by pharming are being seen in the wild (on the Internet). This means a...

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Truston Identity Theft Services recognized in Javelin Report as standing apart from the competition

Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston just dropped me a line about his "privacy friendly" identity theft protection and recovery service being mentioned in the most recent Javelin report.In Tom's own words:Truston was featured in a Javelin Strategy & Research research report entitled "Identity Fraud Protection Services: Double Digit Growth to Continue." The report, released December 2007, provides a comprehensive analysis of the key identity theft protection services and is based in Javelin's leading consumer survey data. According to the report, "MyTruston...

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Do secure storage/destruction facilities really protect information from theft?

Information by it's very nature is hard to inventory. Let's face it, it isn't cash or precious gems and it can be copied in a LOT of different ways.This fact also gives the entity losing it a lot of deniability. Most of the time, it's impossible to be 100 percent sure what happened to any information discovered missing.Could a tape gone missing at a secure storage facility owned by Iron Mountain containing 650,000 customer files reveal that these facilities provide us with a false sense of security?Robert McMillian at Computer World is reporting...

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A rumor of electrical power grids being hacked via the Internet

Here is a scary report -- electrical power grids shut off by hackers demanding money using the Internet.Ted Bridis of the AP is reporting:Hackers literally turned out the lights in multiple cities after breaking into electrical utilities and demanding extortion payments before disrupting the power, a senior CIA analyst told utility engineers at a trade conference.All the break-ins occurred outside the United States, said senior CIA analyst Tom Donahue. The U.S. government believes some of the hackers had inside knowledge to cause the outages. Donahue...

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January Symantec Report reveals questionable blogs, polls and Nigerian Scam restitution schemes

If you ever want to know what criminals and other misfits are up to on the Internet, watching spam traffic can reveal a few clues.After all, spam is the vehicle most cybercriminals use to pass along whatever scheme they are behind designed to part people with their hard-earned money.Symantec noted in December that close to 75 percent of all e-mail being sent is spam.A little over a week ago, they issued their January report, which showed spam levels peaking towards the end of December to 83 percent.Highlights noted in the January report are:Holiday...

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Why Walmart might be looking for a few good spies

Ran into a interesting story alleging that large corporations -- in this instance Wal-Mart -- are hiring former government intelligence types to work in their corporate security departments.The story that I found in RINF.com, which states that they monitor the "surveillance society," focused on Wal-Mart delving into the personal details of two of their former executives.Apparently, the personal details of an affair became public, when one of the executives was being investigated for a conflict of interest with a advertising agency. The article...

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Adopting a homeless critter is a better idea than taking a chance of being scammed on the Internet!

(Billboard calling out puppy mill abuse in Pennsylvania courtesy of Star Cat at Flickr)The fact that there are so many homeless dogs and cats is a sad thing to ponder. If you are like me (and a few humans I know) a trip to the local pound can be a heart breaking experience. With so many homeless animals in the world, it amazes me that anyone would...

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Your computer will not love this Valentine

The Storm Worm, which turns systems into spam spewing zombies without their owner's knowledge is taking a predicted twist and using Valentine's Day as a lure.Websense is reporting:Websense® Security Labs™ has received reports and confirmed that the Storm worm has once again switched lure tactics. The worm has now adopted a Valentine's Day twist in its attempts to infect users with malicious code. For more details on how we protect against Storm attacks, see http://www.websense.com/securitylabs/blog/blog.php?BlogID=141.Websense (full) alert with...

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Blogger exposes security flaws on TSA site

Since 9-11, we've spent billions upgrading security. Here is a sad report about how the TSA (Transportation Security Agency) put up a NOT very secure site with some of the money earmarked for making the nation more secure.Even worse, it seems it wasn't the TSA didn't even discover the problem themselves. The problem was brought to light by a blogger!Here is some commentary from the government report that examines this problem:In October 2006, the Transportation Security Administration launched a website to help travelers whose names were erroneously...

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It's unlikely the IRS is outsourcing tax preparation services to Russia!

Looks like with the start of tax season, the phishermen are again pretending to be the IRS. Using a badge of authority in phishing is nothing new. In the past, we've seen the FBI, Interpol, DOJ and a lot of other official agencies spoofed (impersonated) to trick people into giving up their personal and financial details.Here is a phishmail that got past my spam filter yesterday:Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:02:36 -0500 From: "Internal Revenue Service" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert Subject: IRS Annual Calculations - Tax Refund Internal Revenue...

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Sears faces class action for violating customer privacy on their site

A few days ago, I wrote about a post on the Truston blog concerning Sears being taken to task by a Harvard professor and the Washington Post (Brian Krebs) for violating customer privacy on their site.Not only was information being data mined for marketing purposes, but the site allowed third parties (anyone) access to it.Now it appears lawyers have gotten together a class action against Sears.In an update, Brian Krebs is reporting:In a complaint filed Friday in Cook County, Illinois -- where Sears is headquartered -- the plaintiffs allege that...

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Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu sentenced to three years

Norman Hsu, who used to be a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party has been sentenced to three years for fraud.John Coté at SFGate reports:Disgraced Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu, who became a prolific political moneyman even as he was a fugitive from justice, was sentenced Friday to three years in state prison in a San Mateo...

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New IRS rules dictate stricter controls on how personal information is marketed by preparers!

Last year, a large amount of fraud cases were reported when people claimed refund anticipation loans using fraudulent information. In many instances, these fraudulent returns were filed using the earned income tax credit. The earned income tax credit returns a portion, or all of the taxes people pay, who are below a certain income level when they file their yearly tax return.While an honorable practice in principle, the credit is targeted by fraudsters, who submit fake W-2 information and claim large refunds that they were not entitled to.W-2's...

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Sears site violates people's privacy!

Ran into this story on the Truston blog. Tom Fragala, CEO of Truston writes:The internet retailer you choose just might, without disclosure, install software on your computer to snoop on your web browsing. Brian Krebs at the Security Fix blog has this story. Would you believe it could be one of the country's oldest retailers though?"Sears is having a bit of a rough day with the privacy community. The company got off to a rocky start with revelations that many customers who gave Sears their personal details after shopping at the company's Web site...

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DOJ charges 11 in pump and dump stock spamming operation

The Department of Justice has just announced the arrests of 11 spammers involved in a pump and dump stock spam scheme.Pump and dump schemes victimize people -- lured by the expectation of too good to be true money -- who buy the stocks at artificially inflated prices. They normally lose money when the value suddenly drops because the people behind the scheme sell off their artificially inflated shares.One of those arrested, an Alan Ralsky is considered one of the biggest spammers around by Spamhaus, which is an organization dedicated to tracking...

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CALPIRG does consumer study revealing that privacy laws are being ignored in California

Many believe that the reason behind the identity theft crisis is the irresponsible data mining and selling of people's personal and financial information. This information then gets stored in places, where it is obtained (bought or stolen) by people, who have more than a "marketing" interest in it.The buying and selling of people's personal information is a multi-billion dollar business.Given this, a lot of people and consumer groups now are questioning how this done and how the information is protected.CALPIRG, the California Public Interest Research...

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Lou Dobbs' audience responds to Hillary's allegation that he is full of hot air!

My wife, who is a die hard Lou Dobbs fan brought to my attention that Hillary Clinton had recently called him "full of hot air."In the response to this statement, Lou and crew ran this poll on their show yesterday.The question they asked was:Do you believe presidential candidates who support open borders, illegal alien amnesty, and outsourcing of middle class American jobs to cheap overseas labor markets are full of "hot air"?I decided to check the results this morning and 95 percent of the people responding felt that the presidential candidates...

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IT Policy Compliance Group looks back at what was important in 2007

The IT Policy Compliance Group issued a great year end analysis of the important events that took place in the world of IT security in 2007.Lamont Wood wrote this interesting analysis and leads into it by saying:Looking back, those who specialize in the history of corporate and cultural debacles may one day hail 2007 as the year when the dusty topic of document retention became a matter of corporate life and death. Thanks to the pervasiveness of networked computers, corporate data proved again and again that it could not only leak into the wild,...

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FTC issues report on Malicious Spam and Phishing

The Federal Trade Commission just released it's report on the current state of malicious spam and phishing in today's electronic world.Interestingly enough, it points out that spammers are criminals. While this isn't a new revelation, the report seems to want to drive that point home. Maybe this is part of the education process referred to at the bottom of this post?Here is what the press release had to say:During the workshop, panelists confirmed that spam has increasingly become a significant global vector for the dissemination of malware and...

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Discovering a record amount of information theft only solves half the problem

Has anyone besides me noticed that when data breaches are reported, we see an official statement that the information hasn't been used by identity thieves?After thinking on that one for awhile, it makes sense that criminals would stop using the information from a data breach after it has been reported. So far as information used before the breach is discovered, it's pretty hard to prove where the information came from in an identity theft case. With so much compromised information out there, it's nearly impossible to figure out where the point-of-compromise...

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