October 2006 Archive

Choicepoint mistakes can get you arrested

October 31st, 2006 | No comments

A guy was the victim of identity theft. He reported it. Choicepoint didn’t care much about correcting the data, and later the arrested for child molestation and rape.

Of course, according to Techdirt and Choicepoint correspondence, the story was old. Aw, who cares – we haven’t heard much about Choicepoint in a while anyway.

Stock spam has gone way too plain text

October 30th, 2006 | No comments

Damn stuff gets through even my ninety-four filters…

Example:

Subject: Notice from livejournal forum
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:45:40 -0060
Message-ID: <01c6fc6c$be0676c0$6c822ecf@hnof>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=”iso-8859-1″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409
Thread-Index: Aca6QY6047YJ13PTKNHPYQ6SLL7828==

The accumulation of positions by those in the know has shot
A_U_N_I up 33% in a few short days. We hope you all got in
early like we told you to, and are enjoying your good fortune.
But even if you didn’t don’t worry because the big announcement
has yet to be made. Monday, October 30 may be your last chance
before this thing triples. Don’t hesitate.

Price: O.85
Projected: 2.3O
Rating: 5/5

This is the break you’ve been waiting for! Spice up your
holdings with A_U_N_I and WIN!

Poor sap doesn’t even know I’ve already sold my A_U_N_I after receiving the great tip from the first twelve “sources.”

Government election site hacked

October 30th, 2006 | No comments

The second of today’s non-surprises…

Hackers broke into the website of the Dupage County, IL election commission and proceeded to post some “not-so-nice” modifications.

No, not very nice. I told you…don’t be shocked.

Nobody saw MySpace phishers coming

October 30th, 2006 | No comments

That was a joke, of course. Slashdot noted that a MySpace phishing exploit has been discovered. Netcraft found the pages, embedded on MySpace itself. No surprise.
Read more »

Wireless hacking tool provider says..

October 29th, 2006 | No comments

“We need more compact tools – those key-exchanging wireless protocols are killing us, and we must have those damn Facebook passwords!”

I don’t know what other argument people are going to have over wireless security on college campuses.

While the WPA and WPA2 approach improves on the preceding older wireless encryption protocol, or WEP, “as with nearly every other ’secure’ network communications method, it is not foolproof and can be attacked,” said Shane Coursen, senior technical consultant at Kaspersky Labs. “However, we aren’t seeing those kinds of attacks yet.”

Maybe because you can’t fit a Beowulf cluster in a backpack yet?

Hospital hacked, but nobody cared

October 29th, 2006 | No comments

The Akron Children’s Hospital information system was hacked. SSNs and bank account records are floating around, and now the criticism is flying.

The hospital says its security consultants initially didn’t think there was a major problem.

Sounds like someone needs new security consultants – ones that aren’t breaking into the pharmacy all the time.

Latest bug for IE7 probably a big mistake

October 27th, 2006 | No comments

Secunia has found a bug in Internet Explorer 7, one that allows address bar spoofing that could lead to phishing exploits.

This must be a big mistake, as there is no way Microsoft can blame some other software for the issue.

MIcrosoft opens up Sender ID

October 26th, 2006 | No comments

Faced with criticism over licensing requirements, Microsoft has decided to release the Sender ID Framework under its Open Specification Promise.

This makes a lot of sense. Sender ID has long been the subject of controversy, and since a sizable portion of email servers are already open source, this may just lead to some adoption. We all just want some standards, and regardless of whether Sender ID and SPF are the answer, this is a step in that [right] direction.

Mac OS X now totally insecure

October 26th, 2006 | No comments

According a MacWorld report, a bluetooth security hole has been found. Yes, that’s right – bluetooth. You know, bluetooth! You don’t use bluetooth? Where have you been?

My guess is on a deserted island for the last six months, as you would have to have ignored about that duration’s worth of updates to OS X (since Apple posted a patch in like May).

Bring new meaning to the term “money manager”

October 25th, 2006 | No comments

Online scammers have been chasing bank accounts for a while now – most everyone is on to the Washington Mutual phish. Now, hackers are cracking online brokerage accounts. Both Etrade and Ameritrade have been hit hard, as thieves break into accounts, trade, and move money out.

So, customers are losing money at brokerages. How’s that any different than before the internet existed?
Read more »