Category Archives: Security

Counting The Cost Of Online Crime

Phishing is beginning to bite. British police at a high-tech crime congress (noted by USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review) say that 83% of Britain’s 201 largest companies reported experiencing some form of cybercrime. The damage has cost them more than £195 million ($368 million) from downtime, lost productivity and perceived damage to their brand or… Read More »

Going Public With Sensitive Data

Forget phishing for your passwords via dodgy emails. Just use Wi-Fi. Internet security company Secure Computing Corporation have today released a report prepared by security consultants Canola/Jones Internet Investigations which “documents the serious risks of password theft that business travelers encounter when using the Internet in hotels, cafes, airports, and trade show kiosks.”  The full… Read More »

Windows’ Gaping, Seven Month Hole

Quite a big hooha over this latest Microsoft vulnerability, and I readily ‘fess up to the fact that I didn’t really take this seriously. Seems like I wasn’t the only one. But folk like Shawna McAlearney of SearchSecurity.com points out that the delay of 200 days between Microsoft being notified and their coming out with… Read More »

Viruses And The Russian Connection

As feared, MyDoom seems to come from Russia. Or does it? The Moscow Times quotes Kaspersky Labs as saying they used location-sensing software to trace the first e-mails infected with MyDoom back to addresses with Russian Internet providers. “It’s scary, but most serious viruses are written in Russia,” said Denis Zenkov, spokesman for Kaspersky, the… Read More »

Is The Era Of The Nigerian Scam Over?

The Register says that Nigerian scammers are getting run out of town by vigilant ISPs and greater user awareness. The article points to how scammers are having to use more obscure free email addresses — Elvis.com, Irangate.com, Handbag.com, for example — to avoid getting shut down before they can reach their target audience.   They’re… Read More »