Michael Gracie 

A system processing a million a day in child support payments was infected with a trojan horse, and now the Nebraska Treasurer’s Office is scratching its head. Actually, the head scratching part is just a theory of mine – usually a bureaucrat’s first notion is to downplay the problem. “A preliminary investigation of the incident [...]

Once gone, now recovered. No word on how it was recovered, but someone mentioned they think the data within might not have been accessed. Gone for over a month. Plenty of publicity. Now a stealth recovery and no breach. Sounds like someone wants to get out of paying many millions for credit monitoring if you [...]

Police in Douglas County, Colorado (right down the street from Spamroll) are going to start wardriving for the purpose of warning open wireless device hosts of impending danger. I wish I could properly spell out what a complete waste of time and money this is, but I guess some bureaucrat thought it was a good [...]

First people wondered whether the “enhanced security” of Windows Vista would plunder the multi-billion dollar computer security market. The talk there has quieted, as there is really no telling when the software might be released (and since you need a quad processor with 8 gigs of ram to run it, the uptake won’t be quick [...]

When you think of blue pills, you imagine tv ads by politicians, people who are bored with their partners, and people who can’t get enough of their partners. You might also think of a lot of spam, due primarily to the previous points. However, you’d likely never think a “blue pill” could hide malware, completely [...]

It is always cute to see companies attempt to take the high road regarding their promotion. We all know it is all about the greenbacks, so while 888 Casino denounces blog spam, you know someone will keep on trying, because there is money to be made. If they really wanted to stop uncontrolled, unethical promotion, [...]

The Bush Administration’s Office of Management and Budget is advising federal agencies to encrypt laptop data, among other measures, following a flurry of data thefts (think VA). I don’t track my inbound stats at Spamroll all that thoroughly, but I do think I would have remembered if the White House visited. Therefore, I wonder where [...]

Ohio University has struggled as of late with hackers. Actually, struggle isn’t doing the problem justice. The institution has been hacked time and time….uh…..again. And after they ignored warnings over faulty security to boot. Now they are being sued. Class action status is being pursued, with ongoing credit monitoring and damages for identity theft losses [...]

I could have put up a sensationalist title like “Harvard says Go Hackers!” but that would have done nothing except ensure the post wound up on the front page of Digg, and I don’t yet understand what all those little votes mean anyway. A student writing for Harvard Law Review thinks that outing vulnerabilities keeps [...]

Nobody had to attempt brute force hacks of RSA keys via SSH. Nobody had to implement a cross-site script exploit to foul up the site. Nobody had to break into someone’s home and steal a laptop. Nothing of the sort was needed to get at the data. Someone left spreadsheets full of Navy personnel information [...]