Tag Archives: Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Real Lesson From CardSystems

The sad truth about the CardSystems debacle is that it wasn’t unusual, at least in the delay and obfuscation over reporting it. An AP report in yesterday’s HoustonChronicle says Most businesses do not report cyber attacks to law enforcement authorities, fearing the disclosure would harm their image and benefit rivals, FBI Director Robert Mueller said… Read More »

The Big Credit Card Theft

Trying to make sense of the massive theft of credit card numbers at CardSystems, ‘a leading provider of end-to-end payment processing solutions focused exclusively on meeting the needs of small to mid-sized merchants’, in which information on more than 40 million credit cards may have been stolen. CardSystems itself has issued only a brief statement… Read More »

Meet The Mule, Or Correspondence Manager

Here’s how Russians and other scammers are getting their illicit gains back home. The BBC website reports on a scam where (probably Russian) scammers are posting job ads claiming to be charities looking for people to forward donations made by hi-tech firms. Those responding to the job ads — usually for something like a “correspondence… Read More »

Phishing And The Future Of Banking

Could phishing kill off online banking?   Probably not, but it’s likely to force greater regulation by central banks and others which will, reckon British-based Internet security consultants mi2g, mean “the next generation of electronic banking may have to rely on deeper layers of authentication that couple passwords with biometric security and smart card authentication.”   Mi2g estimate… Read More »

News: Terrorist List Hit By, Er, Virus

 AP reports that the State Department’s electronic system for checking every visa applicant for terrorist or criminal history failed worldwide for several hours late Tuesday because of a computer virus, leaving the U.S. government briefly unable to issue visas. The virus crippled the department’s Consular Lookout and Support System, known as CLASS, which contains more… Read More »