A new way to store identities on the Internet and saves you from having to type in your passwords all over the web? OpenID: an actually distributed identity system is a distributed identity system, but one that’s actually distributed and doesn’t entirely crumble if one company turns evil or goes out of business. An OpenID-enabled site/blog… Read More »
Stealing passwords in the old days used to involve shoulder surfing — cruising past the mark while s/he’s tapping in her/his password into the computer/ATM/cookie dispenser. But I had a scare today that made me realise that this is still a pretty easy way to get information. Newly landed in Hong Kong, I breezed over… Read More »
More evidence that phishers are widening their net. Munir Kotadia of ZDNet Australia reports that Yahoo’s free instant-messaging (IM) service is being targeted by phishers in an attempt to steal usernames, passwords and other personal information. Yahoo confirmed on Thursday its service was being targeted by a phishing scam. According to the search giant, attackers… Read More »
Further to my column about fingerprint biometric scanners (subscription only ), I’ve heard from a company working on a different kind of biometric security: Via the bone. Last week, Mass.-based RSA Security Inc. (the guys who make the SecurID number tag, called ‘a two-factor user authentication system’ in the jargon) announced a joint research collaboration with… Read More »
Yesterday I wrote about the odd press release from the Internet Security Foundation and the apparent conflict of interest between a foundation pointing out flaws in software (in this case, Windows) while at the same time promoting its own related software. Today I received a response from the founder of the company that registered the… Read More »