40M Credit Card Numbers Stolen
December 9, 2008
Washington Post reported today that 11 people were charged in the global theft of 40 million credit card numbers from at least nine U.S. retailers in what they said was one of the largest and most complex hacking and identity theft cases ever brought.
Officials with the Department of Justice said the people indicted were part of a criminal ring that stretched from the United States to Eastern Europe to East Asia, highlighting the global nature of computer crime. Charges of conspiracy, computer intrusion, fraud and identity theft have been brought against people from Estonia, Ukraine, China and Belarus, as well as the United States.
One person, known only by an online alias, Delpiero, has not been located.
Using sophisticated hacking techniques that included cruising for wireless networks, officials said the accused breached security systems to obtain credit and debit numbers from shoppers at major retailers such as T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, which are owned by TJX Cos.; Barnes & Noble; BJ’s Wholesale Club; and Sports Authority.
“Cases like this send a clear message to those who might be tempted to abuse our computer networks to steal information and harm law-abiding people and businesses: If you do, we will track you down wherever you are in the world, we will arrest you, and we will send you to jail,” Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said at a news conference yesterday.
He said the case highlights the increasing vulnerability of personal information to t…
Consider Catastrophe Recovery
October 16, 2008
Learn How to Keep IT Running When a catastrophe Strikes
Disaster recovery has become a hot topic in the IT world. A University of Texas study found that 43% of companies experiencing a catastrophic documents loss never recover and by half of them go out of business within two years. The catastrophe Recovery seminar will cover key issues for companies to consider when they design their DR strategy.
Online Technologies Corporation, a managed input center operator, announces a free educational seminar on catastrophe recovery and electronic backup for CIOs and IT Managers. Online Technologies has partnered with UHY Advisors, Coretek Services, and Capricorn Diversified Systems, Inc. to deliver the seminar. The seminar will run from 10AM to 1PM on October 16th, 2008 and will include lunch.
Online Technologies Corporation is the leading Michigan goods Center operator.
More on the seminar can be found at that Michigan Colocation site.
www.lucidlink.com
WiFi Safety Measure
October 14, 2008
Over 60% of the wireless networks used by small and mid-sized businesses are unsecure, leaving the door wide open to hackers to steal personal identity and confidential corporate data, access computer networks, and launch attacks from the business networks. Many businesses do not understand how vulnerable they are to attack by their WiFi networks.
WiFi protection is fundamental - using WPA or WPA2 technology. Set it up and use it. There are a number of small business WiFi safety measure Servers out there (based on RADIUS technology) that can hide many or most of the technical details.
Don’t let hackers pull your passwords, business and personal info off your wireless networks.
www.lucidlink.com
Automatic protections don’t assemble you safer online
October 14, 2008
Automatic protections don’t manufacture you safer online, MSU researchers say: Threats to online privacy and defense continue to plague Net users, and the protections from Net providers are only part of the reply, according to a national survey conducted by Michigan State University researchers. Professors Robert LaRose, division of Telecommunication, info Studies and Media, and Nora Rifon, area of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing, are co-directors of the survey sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Spam is the biggest problem, report 66 percent of World Wide Web users, followed by spyware, cited by 42 percent; computer viruses, cited by 35 percent, and dishonorable e-mail or phishing attempts, reported by 34 percent. Nineteen out of 20 users have spam and virus protection. But 15 percent of the respondents have no protection against spyware, 28 percent have no defenses against phishing, and similar numbers are unaware of spyware or phishing defenses. Three-fifths of those surveyed use at least one of the default protections from their Web provider, and a similar number update protections automatically. However, those who use World Wide Web service provider protections or self-moving updates feel no safer than those who do not. “Those who set up their own protections regarding Web site verification receive less spam than those who rely on the Net provider’s protection and far less than those who don’t have spam protection at all. It pays to do it yourself…
6 Fallacies | WiFi Network Security
October 12, 2008
No one wants to get into my WiFi network, and whether they get a free ride on the World Wide Web who cares?
Unfortunately, we live in a world where crimes and vandalism is common place, even more so when the crime can go undetected. Many hackers or disgruntled employees are merely looking to compromise someone’s systems whether or not there are huge payoffs – these vandals break in simply considering they can. Through your open WiFi network, and intentional hacker can destroy the network and every PC on the network. Imagine the cost to your organization whether a hacker launches a virus directly into your network or re-initializes the hard drives on every PC they could access.
I don’t have any urgent knowledge that anyone would want to access. Many citizens believe that their electronic knowledge is not at risk or of little value to anyone who sees it. that is dangerous thinking. With simple sniffing software, (look by the shoulder of a Wi-Fi hacker) every packet of notes you send or receive by the WiFi network can be read and stored to disk. Most users don’t realize that when they access their e-mail from a POP3 explanation by WiFi, their e-mail explanation user name and password are readable by the air. Imagine the access to personal and confidential info a hacker can have after capturing your e-mail password and having unrestricted access to your e-mail detail for months on end without being detected.
There’s no one within 300 feet of my building, and WiFi can…
Good Tool for Secure Access at WiFi Hotspots
October 12, 2008
Even whether you secure your own WiFi Network, you can still face the challenge of getting a secure network connection on a public WiFi network (WiFi hotspot).
considering it’s so easy to capture an e-mail username and password on an unsecured WiFi network (look over the shoulder of a wireless hacker, you should never connect to a public WiFi network without a secure connection
One way to effectively deal with that is to compose certain that your e-mail connection uses an SSL connection. Many e-mail providers will supply you the SSL connection ports whether you poke & prod them sufficient for the knowledge.
Another alternative is to use a personal VPN like that available from WiTopia. The personalVPN works in the background to seamlessly secure your sent and received documents via an encrypted tunnel to WiTopia’s Web gateways. Works with any and all applications including mail, instant messaging, and web surfing.
The Five Deadly Dangers of Unsecured WiFi Networks
October 12, 2008
Once hackers have access to your WiFi network, they can readily capture personal and business knowledge. There are two types of WiFi attacks. Passive attacks, where the hacker captures your network traffic, are nearly impossible to detect considering the hacker never joins your network. They can sit silently with their antenna tuned into your network and capture gigabytes of network traffic for off-line analysis at a later moment. Active attacks, where the hacker joins the network, can be the most devastating considering they can launch active attacks into the network and onto your devices on the network.
There are 5 attacks that WiFi hackers can very easily & readily perform on your wireless network with very little effort or expense. The first two are passive attacks, and the last 3 are active attacks. But invent no mistake - all of these attacks can be deadly.
Deadly Attack #1: detail and Password Capture. There are several applications that send your explanation and passwords in clear text by the network. For example, every duration a POP3 mail explanation checks for new e-mail, the explanation name & password are in the clear as part of the documents transfer. Anyone sniffing the network traffic can easily get your e-mail explanation knowledge. Once they have that info, they can access your e-mail explanation at their leisure, monitoring for personal knowledge without leaving a trace. From there, any confidential knowledge they can get from yo…