Michael Gracie

It could be because professors can be pains in the ass, and students are looking for revenge. It could just because someone knows there are a lot of names in the database that are paying more attention to their beer inventory and the opposite sex. But it certainly doesn’t matter how fine the school’s curriculum is - even Stanford recently got hacked. Curious that they were one of the recent recipients of a Homeland Security grant to improve software security.

I pick on a lot of educational institutions for mucking up their data security. And I root for them when they make even meager attempts to guard all their staff and students’ names, addresses, mothers’ maiden names, and social security numbers. As the latest and greatest is right out my backdoor, I have to root again.
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Two student from Indiana University recently performed an experiment to determine the vulnerability of their fellow students to phishing attempts. Using information gleened from the public internet, they forged sender information, sending out lures that directed recipients to username/password entry pages.

While the report did not outline the results of the study, one things was proven - college students don’t get phishing and fraud, and they are big whiners.
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The Guardian covers a story about how students fair poorer in testing when they have access to computers to assist them in their studies. I end up getting the frank report from a technology blog. I don’t know which is worse, the computers in the classrooms, the calculators used to do the statistics for the study, or the journalist who buried the facts behind the policy flip flopping, at the bottom of the story.
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Scammers are now offering their targets money to cough up personal information. You can read more here: New Phishing Attacks Offer Cash.

I predict two things will become of this.
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The Yale Daily News reported a phishing exploit that was based on the Nigerian 419 format. While the university put a quick stop to it, the notion highlights how much more sophisticated these exploits are now becoming. Read Phishing’ scheme targets students for more.