Thoughts When a Car Alarm Goes Off

Here’s a Monday morning funny, courtesy of GraphJam:

Two-Year Operation Nets 100 Phishers

Sounds like the definition of a classic phishing scheme:

The indictment charges that cyberthieves located in Egypt used classic phishing tactics to direct victims to phony Web sites, where they entered passwords, account numbers, and other data. That info was used to hack into accounts at two banks. Money was transferred from the compromised accounts to fraudulent accounts created by “runners” recruited by the U.S.-based co-conspirators.

Laptop Battery Life

GraphJam is a humorous web site where people upload funny visual aids. For example, how long does the battery in your laptop last?

Lawsuits Filed Over Sidekick Outages

There was an outage earlier in the month of T-Mobile’s Sidekick service. Customers were previously told to back up their data before the outage, and it would be secure. Since the outage, some (but not all) customers have been able to restore their data.

I guess there’s two lessons to be learned here. If you’re providing a service and you’re telling your customers to back up data on your system, then you had better have a good backup and recovery system in place. On the other hand, if you’re a consumer of these services, then maybe it’s a good idea to backup your own data as well.

Security Flaws Discovered in Calif. EDD Website

Identity thieves are looking at your resume online to get information to impersonate you. Make sure that whatever dealings you have with companies on the internet that have access to your personal data are secured.

Comcast to Warn PC Users If They’re Infected

If Comcast is your ISP, it appears that they will start monitoring accounts to make sure you’re not part of a botnet, a network of computers that launch spam, denial of service and malware attacks on other computers without a user’s knowledge. Sometimes it is also called a zombie computer… this is the same type of infection that drove the Conficker scare earlier this year.

New Malware Re-Writes Online Bank Statements to Cover Fraud

Here’s a real scare for your Halloween weekend:

New malware being used by cybercrooks does more than let hackers loot a bank account; it hides evidence of a victim’s dwindling balance by rewriting online bank statements on the fly, according to a new report.

The sophisticated hack uses a Trojan horse program installed on the victim’s machine that alters html coding before it’s displayed in the user’s browser, to either erase evidence of a money transfer transaction entirely from a bank statement, or alter the amount of money transfers and balances.

The ruse buys the crooks time before a victim discovers the fraud, though won’t work if a victim uses an uninfected machine to check his or her bank balance.

Doctors Mistakenly Fax Patients’ Data to Indiana Company

The lack of security around a fax machine amazes me. People don’t use cover sheets because they are lazy and in a hurry… well, maybe not, if there isn’t personal data on there.

But when people use a fax machine for personal use at work, they are generally sending information to banks, health insurers, and mortgage companies. Most of that information contains privacy-sensitive data, yet when you get your transmission sheet back and somebody dumps it on the pile, there is your SSN, bank account numbers, and address for all to behold.

The fax machine ought to be a secured item in your office. Here’s an example of what can happen in a real-world scenario:

Doctors’ offices in Tennessee have been accidentally sending patient information, including Social Security numbers and medical histories, to an Indiana businessman’s fax machine for the past three years. The sensitive medical information was supposed to be sent to the Tennessee Department of Human Services, but Bill Keith, owner of SunRise Solar Inc. in Indiana, says hundreds of confidential medical faxes having been coming to him.

“This is a total breach of privacy,” Keith said. “This is supposed to be confidential, and it just so happens we have some scruples here and wouldn’t do anything with that information. We’ve shredded them, but you can have a file an inch thick in no time.” It looks like the trouble stems from the toll-free fax number. Keith’s number is close to that of the state’s Disability Determination Section, under DHS.

Keith’s fax rang 167 times in a month at the peak of the problem, he said. Keith said he hasn’t kept an exact count, but his office averages about five patient faxes a week and sometimes more.

Every Little Thing You Do Is Interesting

As companies embrace social media and social networks, somehow I don’t think this is what they had in mind.

Why Simpler Slides Win

A simpler interface is easier to use, so it stands to reason that a simpler PowerPoint slide is easier to understand as well:

Hat tip to Tony Ramos.