ICE raid nets 49 illegal security guards in Texas

Looks like the folks at ICE have been busy in Texas going after illegal security providers, some of whom, apparently were armed.Jason Trahan at the Dallas Morning News reports:A task force led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided more than two dozen mostly Latino night clubs, restaurants, pool halls and other businesses Saturday night, arresting 49 undocumented immigrants employed as security guards, officials said. All of those arrested work for two local security companies, which authorities declined to identify Sunday.The investigation...

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Lehman Bros. scammed for $355 million by two dishonest employees

With all the recent problems with Bear Stearns, the news that Lehman Brothers is getting smacked with a $355 million fraud is hardly good news in a gloomy financial market.The scam in question was allegedly perpetrated by two contract (?) employees of Marubeni Corporation, a Japanese trading house. The deal involved a loan to a company called Asclepius Limited to finance medical leases. Asclepius Limited is now bankrupt.Although the details are still sketchy, Reuters was able get a comment from an anonymous source:It is being reported that Lehman...

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Lifelock is getting sued, again!

Lifelock -- the identity theft service founded on an identity theft tale that was later deemed not to be very credible -- is now facing another law suit. This one, which is of the class action variety, alleges that their advertising is misleading and they don't necessarily protect a person from all the different varieties of identity theft.From the press release on the Hagens Berman LLC site:Today an Arizona consumer filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against LifeLock, a heavily promoted company that claims to protect consumers against identity...

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How did hackers plant malware at Hannaford Bros. and steal 4.2 million payment card numbers?

Hannford Brothers, the latest retailer to be compromised in a large scale data breach is reporting that hackers using malware breached their systems.The next million dollar question (literally) is how was the malware (sometimes referred to as crimeware) dropped on their system? A lot of people are looking at this carefully because the company had been certified as meeting PCI (Payment Card Industry) data protection standards.Ross Kerber at the Boston Globe, who gets the hat tip for breaking this latest development in the story wrote:Data security...

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Barack, Hillary John - Does anyone know where our (your) privacy has gone?

About a week ago, I wrote a post about Britney having her privacy "jacked" by a bunch of "naughty" hospital employees. This occurred at one of the most respected medical and institutions of higher learning in the world, the University of California, Los Angeles.Ironically, it's now been revealed that another highly respected institution, the State Department had some "naughty" employees "jack" the privacy of the three major presidential candidates, Barack, Hillary and John. While a lot of us take Britney's exploits with a grain of salt, it's another...

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OCCRP reports on Eastern European/Eurasian organized crime

(Photo courtesy of the OCCRP site)Eastern European/Eurasian organized groups seem to have their hands in a wide variety of organized criminal activity. They are often mentioned when referring to anything from auction fraud to payment (credit/debit) card skimming and computer crimes. eBay claims there are entire towns in Romania making a living via...

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Security vendor removes Hannaford as a client on their site after data breach is revealed!

I ran into an interesting development in the Hannaford data breach on geeksaresexy.net. Allegedly, their IT security vendor of choice (Rapid7) decided to disavow all knowledge of their relationship with Hannaford right after the breach was made public.From the blog post on geeksaresexy.net:Instead, Rapid7 scrubbed all mentions of Hannaford from their client list. Rapid7 obviously didn’t want to be associated with one of the largest data loss incidents in history, and they certainly didn’t want to sully the name of their flagship appliance, the...

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Hannaford Brothers data breach might reveal current security standards are outdated

Hannaford Bros. Co., a grocery retailer based in the Eastern United States is the latest corporation to be victimized by a substantial data breach. Saying that, customers of Hannaford Bros. are going to be victimized, also. So will a lot of financial institutions, who have to deal with the fraud claims and trying to prevent the information from being used.Whenever a data breach of this magnitude occurs, there are a lot of victims.This breach occurred despite that fact Hannaford Bros. had met the payment card industry (PCI) standards for data protection...

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The latest nightmare with RFID

A few days ago, it was reported that one-billion RFID access devices could be compromised by hackers. These devices (using the MiFare RFID chip) are currently deployed as an access device used for mass transit systems, and of far greater concern, secure government facilities.Please note, ComputerWorld has now revised the estimate of MiFare RFID chips in use to two-billion. For the final tally, we'll have to wait until a more detailed report is published.According to news sources, this report will be issued on Wednesday.One person, claiming to be...

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Naughty UCLA employees peek at Britney's medical information

The LA Times is reporting that UCLA Medical Center employees were caught "peeking at" Britney Spears' medical records when she was recently hospitalized in their psychiatric unit.I wonder if a total lack of privacy might be one of the underlying reasons Britney was admitted to this particular unit? Charles Ornstein reports:UCLA Medical Center is taking steps to fire at least 13 employees and has suspended at least six others for snooping in the confidential medical records of pop star Britney Spears during her recent hospitalization in its psychiatric...

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London e-crime conference suggests that hackers are becoming more organized and politically motivated

In the past several years, we've seen a lot of corporate and government systems compromised by hackers. With corporate systems, we assume the intent is financial, however more and more, we hear the term, "corporate espionage" being used. In the global economy, information is often worth more than money.With regards to government systems being hacked, it's hard to speculate that the attack was financially motivated.Mandy Clark of Voice of America wrote an interesting article on this subject, while covering an International e-crime congress in London:British...

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The Dirty Dozen Tax Scams of 2008

The IRS has been in the news recently because it's name has been impersonated (spoofed) to phish personal and financial information from people tricked into believing the IRS was going to send them money.Another recent phishing lure spoofing the IRS name was the upcoming economic stimulus package being promised to the tax paying public. In this case, (too good to be true) promises of money were being sent out by spam spewing zombie computers before the details were finalized in the halls of Congress.These spam spewing zombie computers are part...

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When will we realize how serious the problem of counterfeit devices has become?

On March 6th, Queens District Attorney, Richard Brown announced a series of indictments against a major counterfeiting ring. Although based in New York City, the group was operating nationwide. The ring was obtained skimmed card information from hackers in China. Subsequent news reports have stated that skimmed information was obtained from hackers in the Ukraine, also.From the press release:Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, joined by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, today announced that a forged credit card and identity theft ring...

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Girl Scouts get scammed with fake $100 bill

(Courtesy of the Pasco County, Florida Sheriff's website)If you are like me, you've already bought too many cookies from the Girl Scouts. Everywhere I go, there is a table selling them and it's hard for me to say no to them.After all, supporting organizations like the Girl Scouts has long been considered an honorable endeavor.It's sad to say that at...

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Symantec releases March Spam and Scam Trends

Even though scams don't all originate on the Internet, a great majority of them do. If you ever want to figure out what scams are making their rounds, taking a look at spam analysis is a pretty good way of doing it.Spam is the vehicle that most cyber misfits seem to prefer when trying to pull a fast one on the unwary. Fortunately, most of them are far from geniuses and all it takes is a little awareness to foil their attempts at trickery.Of course, providing a little body armor for your system is highly recommended, also. Especially, if you are...

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Fine Wine and Identity Theft?

What do fine wine and identity theft have in common? According to the FTC's top cities for identity theft, the answer is Napa, California.Christopher Null blogged about this on Yahoo:While you're sipping Chardonnay and enjoying the beauty of the wine country, crooks may be busy swiping your identity. According to a Federal Trade Commission study, Napa, California, earned the title of worst town for identity theft, with over 300 consumer complaints per 100,000 residents in 2007. Madera, California, (280 complaints per 100,000 residents) and Greeley,...

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Will counterfeit documents enable the next terrorist attack?

(Cartoon by Suad Leija. Suad is the artist, however the political opinions are those of her husband. More cartoons can be seen on her new site, here.)With the 2008 election in full swing, most of the candidates seem content to dodge the issue of border security. Tied into another controversial issue, which is illegal immigration, discussing it is probably...

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