72 Results from 2011
Robert Siciliano Security Analyst at Safr.me
Cyber scams happen to the young and the old, the rich and the poor. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your credit is, or whether or not you have a credit card. Cybercriminals target everyone, regardless of how much or how little you rely on a computer. The lowest of the lowlifes, however, tend to prey upon the weak and uninformed. And all too often...
20 August 2011 /security /regulation
The Sony Corporation has been providing consumers with stellar electronics since before the introduction of the Walkman. The past six months have been harsher for Sony, with attacks by hacktivists and numerous breaches of clients’ data. Many recent breaches involved usernames, passwords, email addresses, and in some cases, credit card numbers. Each...
17 August 2011 /security /regulation
You’ve probably heard the phrase “a fox watching the henhouse.” Today, that applies to people on the inside of organizations who work in trusted positions, and who use those positions to steal client or employee information for their own personal gain. As much as 70% of all identity theft is committed by individuals with inside access to organizati...
09 August 2011 /security /regulation
In a story that could have come right out of a movie, a widely respected police officer turned out to be a Mexican national who stole an American identity and moved to Alaska to become a cop. I’ll bet Sarah Palin didn’t see this one coming. Fox News reports that the identity thief had been employed as an Anchorage police officer using his assumed ...
29 July 2011 /security /regulation
1. Realize that you can become a victim at any time. Not a day goes by when we don’t hear about a new hack. With 55,000 new pieces of malware a day, security never sleeps. 2. Think before you post. Status updates, photos, and comments can reveal more about you than you intended to disclose. You could end up feeling like some silly politician as you...
27 July 2011 /security /regulation
I finally got one of those “I’m stuck in London” emails. My friend Kate’s Gmail account was hacked, and everyone on her contact list received an email from a hacker posing as Kate: “Hi, Apologies, but I made a quick trip, to London,United Kingdom and got mugged, my bag, stolen from me with my passport and credit cards in it. The embassy is willing ...
14 July 2011 /security /regulation
Once criminal hackers get a person’s username and email address, they can begin to launch a targeted spear phish scam. Scammers copy the design of each breached entities outgoing email campaign and blast the breached list with “account update” or other ruses. Gaming site Sega Pass was hacked. On the Sega Pass website it states, “we had identified t...
According to a recent report from Verizon, data breaches are on the rise. There were 760 data breaches recorded in 2010, compared to 140 breaches in 2009. However, there were approximately four million records stolen in 2010, as opposed to 144 million stolen in 2009. This means there were fewer large-scale data breaches compromised of multimillion...
02 July 2011 /security /regulation
In a perfect world there would be no sickness, nothing would ever break, everyone would get along, yummy food wouldn’t make you fat, and there’d be no crime. However, there are forces over which you and I have no control and we have to struggle simply to maintain balance. In a perfect world, a bank wouldn’t need you or me to help detect fraud. Acc...
17 June 2011 /security /regulation
For the past decade, much of banking has taken place online, after hundreds of years of traditional banking. Banks have streamlined their processes, but must also cope with fraud. With banks absorbing billions in losses, consumers also pay. In a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. residents, 60% responded that dealing with fraud is the banks’ responsibili...
13 June 2011 /security /regulation
Welcome to Finextra. We use cookies to help us to deliver our services. You may change your preferences at our Cookie Centre.
Please read our Privacy Policy.