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Thursday, September 19, 2002 |
Filching someone else's good name through identity theft can significantly enrich the criminal and impoverish the victim. Contrary to some views, identity theft is indeed about numbers and about money. A recent study by Meridian Research makes the projection that by 2006 the financial institution sector alone will lose $8 billion to identity theft. In addition, an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 people a year become victims of identity theft, and Federal Trade Commission data show that nearly 86,000 people filed identity theft complaints in 2001[Help Net Security - News]
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Peeved consumers who claim online auction sites are unresponsive to fraud are increasingly taking matters into their own hands. These cyber vigilantes are filing more police reports, attempting more often to track down merchants on their own, and putting up more Web sites to warn others of merchants they say are unscrupulous. They say they have little choice, because auction sites don't have enough employees to enforce millions of daily transactions. [NewsFactor Cybercrime & Security]
23:09
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Anscheinend hat das pay-for-surf Unternehmen daten gesammelt, die es nicht h...tte sammeln sollen und verschachert jetzt allerlei Kundendaten. [heise online news]
22:40
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E-mail management company SparkList.com has confirmed that customer e-mail addresses were stolen from its database, allowing some customers' mailing lists to be bombarded with spam. An internal investigation into complaints about spam revealed that the lists were compromised in March, SparkList COO Steven Brown said in an e-mail to clients on Tuesday. SparkList, which was acquired by Lyris Technologies in August, said it suspected former employees were responsible for the theft of addresses because only a small portion of the database was compromised. "An outside entity would not limit itself to a small subset of the addresses available," Brown said. After the acquisition, Lyris hired only three of SparkList's 20 to 25 employees, Brown had said previously. SparkList said the organization sending the spam was a "well-known spammer" and that it was exploring its legal options in relation to anti-spam laws. It also said it was assisting law enforcement officials in the investigation. [Privacy Digest]
22:34
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In this article of the german newspaper "taz" I read that the Sudi-Arabian Internet filtering system was build by the University of Mannheim, Germany and the GTZ, which is a government owned development agency. [taz Nr. 6833 vom 22.8.2002, Seite 14]
21:11
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A 21-year old from Surbiton, Surrey has been arrested on suspicion of writing and distributing the T0rn rootkit, which dumbs down the process of hacking Linux servers.
Officers from Scotland Yard's Computer Crime Unit arrested the man for alleged offences under Computer Misuse Act 1990 earlier this week, as part of a joint FBI/Scotland Yard investigation into the creation of the T0rn rootkit. A search warrant was served and computer equipment seized from his house. [The Register]
Still using userspace based r00tkits - that's so last century! O:->
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Leaders of overseas dissident groups are claiming that the Chinese government has been targeting them with a wave of electronic attacks, in an effort to monitor and disrupt their operations. Tibetan and East Turkestan freedom groups, banned news organizations, Falun Gong supporters, and other sites have seen a marked increase in the number of incoming viruses and trojan horses to their public e-mail accounts. The heightened activity started in April, when China's Minister for Public Security urged law enforcement to crack down on 'subversive' groups on the Internet. Also, several of the attacks were traced back to provincial China Telecom offices, raising suspicions that the hacking attempts are state-sanctioned. [Hideaway.Net]
20:32
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Another note from the National Cybercrime Conference: Mark Calloway, a lawyer from NC pointed out that fraud on the internet is seldom prosecuted since individual damage is to low and individual cases are selcom aggregated into bigger ones.
10:56
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Just found in my Notices from the National Cybercrime Conference 2002:
Mark Echenweiler (DoJ) estimated that Carnivore was used 15 to 20 times in 2001.
10:52
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Zem provides us with an overview of wiretrapping statistics:
The BBC provides an interesting fact about wiretapping in the UK:
information gained from phone taps cannot be used as evidence in court.
The article suggests this is in stark contrast with the rest of the
world, but that's not quite true. Recent wiretapping statistics from Australia show that, of
the 2150 wiretapping warrants issued in 2000-2001, less than half led to
arrests. This is consistent with the notion that wiretaps aren't used
for collecting evidence,... [zem]
9:46
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Maximillian Dornseif, 2002.
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