Global Cyber News Bits, October 7, 2009 from CommunityDNS
Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.
F.B.I. Arrests Dozens for ‘Phishing’ ID Theft Scheme
U.S. and Egyptian authorities have banded together to break a phishing scheme that has victimized thousands of people with a combined theft thus far of a couple of million dollars.
Authorities are expecting to make 100 arrests in Egypt and the US, with US-based arrests occurring in North Carolina, Nevada and, the heaviest concentration of the ring being Southern California.
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Online banking fraud in the UK hits a new high
Thanks to increased phishing attacks online banking fraud is on the rise in the UK by 55% for the first 6 months of 2009. Phishing has made capturing user credentials easier. The increase has raked in £39 million for the hackers.
Citing increased security processes at card readers, card fraud has actually decreased. While still bringing £232.8 for the hackers the amount is 23% less when compared with the same 6 month period from 2008.
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Australian ISP in court for not disconnecting users
Australia’s third largest ISP was taken to court by film companies for not stopping the distribution of copyrighted films. To date 29,914 copies of illegal downloads have occurred through the ISP.
The film companies want the ISP to disconnect the users who are sharing the videos. Australian law states it does not force ISPs to “monitor its service or to seek facts to indicate infringing activity,” and that they must “reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers.” The ISP is fine with disconnecting those who repeatedly violate a copyright law. Making an “allegation of infringement” is not the same as “proof of infringement”.
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Visa gives merchants crypto card security guidelines
In what has been learned from the massive TJX data breach, Visa has published best practices for end-to-end encryption of card information. The call is for data to be encrypted at the point it is accepted by a merchant’s card-reading device.
Visa is expected to provide incentives for merchants who use point-of-sale devices that encrypt data from the point of reading, while penalizing those who have failed to move towards adoption.
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Security researcher shows how hackers spy on BlackBerry and other smartphones
With the growth of smartphones around the globe, hackers can use this platform to tap into ways of obtaining personal identifiable information.
While some phones are harder to hack than others hackers are relying on “social engineering” whereby they design a way for users to open up the channel themselves for malware to be installed. Such social engineering tactics could be designing a free application that can be downloaded onto one’s phone. During the downloading process malicious code could be installing itself onto the user’s phone.
Demonstrated ways hackers obtain information include:
- Grabbing the data currently stored on the phone
- Listening in on a conversation
- Silently “answering” a phone and then turning on the speakerphone to hear of any conversations going on in a meeting
- Forwarding incoming and outgoing texts to the hacker
- Allowing the hacker to write and send messages from the victim’s device
- Taking pictures at set intervals to find the victim’s location
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Filed under: Anycast, Australia, Banking, Community DNS, CommunityDNS, Cybercrime, Cybergang, Cybersecurity, DNS, DNS Resolution, E-commerce, Egypt, ISP, malware, Phishing, Security, SMS, Spam, UK, US Government | Leave a Comment
Tags: Anycast, Australia, Business Continuity, Business resilience, Community DNS, CommunityDNS, Cyber Criminal, Cybergangs, DNS, DNS Resolution, Egypt, Encryption, FBI, Global resolution, Hacker, Heartland, ID Theft, Internet, ISP, Online Banking Fraud, Phishing, Point-of-Sale, Resolution Service, Security, Smartphones, TJX, UK, Visa
