679 Results
Robert Siciliano Security Analyst at Safr.me
Without question, 2011 is the year for hackers of all kinds to get their 15 minutes of fame. But it feels like it’s lasting a lot longer than 15 minutes. With so many different breeds of hackers, each with their own agenda and an endless supply of potential targets, the media has certainly been more than willing to give them all the attention they...
16 September 2011 /security /regulation
The most basic advice for protecting your own identity is to protect your Social Security number. The obvious solution is simply never to disclose your number, but this is silly, since, depending on your age, you have probably provided it to hundreds of people, on hundreds of forms. It now sits in hundreds of databases, accessible to thousands, an...
26 August 2011 /security /regulation
Identity theft victims don’t need Jessica Van Vliet, an assistant professor in counseling psychology at the University of Alberta, to tell them that they no longer feel safe when conducting everyday financial transactions, which most of us take for granted. But she did a study highlighting a fact that many of us in the industry have already known:...
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...
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