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3 Snipers Targeting Your Private Data

The U.S. is being targeted at the highest levels of our nation’s critical infrastructure. You’re a target too.

Sadly, there are at least three privacy snipers out there, who have our valuable data in their sights. You can choose to ignore them, deny them or avoid them; however they are relentless and they aren’t  planning on going away any time soon. Informed security experts clearly acknowledge this reality. We should too.

I recently watched two compelling TED.com talks given by security gurus Bruce Schneier and Mikko Hypponen. Their distinct messages and points of view shared a very common theme. Digital crime has emerged as one of our nation’s greatest security threats. These rogue attacks are neither diminishing, nor are they under control.

Bruce Schneier believes that our preconceived notions of security have lulled us to sleep. We believe that the hotels we trust, the food we eat, and the planes we board are safe. According to Schneier, that feeling of security bears little resemblance to actual security, we have just talked ourselves into believing that those activities are what he refers to as “models of safety”. Those models, Schneier says, are hard to dislodge. This thinking makes us more vulnerable to the tactics of relentless identity thieves and hackers.

Hypponen on the other hand, sees value in identifying the three types of online attackers who rule the digital underworld. They are: Continue Reading…

February 14, 2012 in Cyberwar, Data security, Federal Government, Financial Crime, Privacy

Ahoy Matey! Piracy In The Digital Age

Google’s eye-catching twenty four hour “blackout” last Wednesday, protesting PIPA and SOPA sure got my attention.  How did it make you feel?

Watching sites like Wikipedia and Google go dark, reminded me of the media censorship I witnessed as a tourist in Asia a few years ago. Downright creepy.

Imagine not having online access to the information you need (assuming it is legal for you to own it). That’s the question we must face.

Do you and I have a right to freely acquire copyrighted content such as books, movies and music without paying?

Digital pirates think the status-quo is swell because the more we feast, the richer they get.

Law enforcement officials in New Zealand , in cooperation with the FBI, arrested the 38 year-old founder of one of the web’s largest file-sharing sites, also known as “file-sharing lockers” Megaupload on Wednesday.

The suspect, who had his name legally changed from Continue Reading…

January 23, 2012 in Cyberwar, Data security, Federal Government, Financial Crime

How Egypt Pulled The Internet’s Plug

The Egyptian government has apparently accomplished what many technology experts said could not possibly happen.

Published reports indicate that the “plug” was pulled on Internet access in Egypt on the evening of January 27th, 2011  at about 6PM local time. According to fraud prevention, monitoring  and analytics company  iovation,  Egyptian use of the internet instantly and almost literally fell off a cliff.

As reported in  the blog of  noted security expert Robert Siciliano:

NPR reports “Egypt has apparently done what many technologists thought was unthinkable for any country with a major Internet economy: It unplugged itself entirely from the Internet to try and silence dissent. Experts say it’s unlikely that what’s happened in Egypt could happen in the United States because the U.S. has numerous Internet providers and ways of connecting to the Internet. Coordinating a simultaneous shutdown would be a massive undertaking.”

The Los Angeles Times confirmed that both Facebook and Twitter were affected by the outage, but that after a week of unrest, access to the Internet has been restored by the Egyptian government: Continue Reading…

February 2, 2011 in Cyberwar

Tis’ The Season For Ruthless Online Fraud

The most troubling aspect about the newest WikiLeaks breach is the grim realization that our nation’s most sensitive information can be so vulnerable, easily accessed and leaked to the world.

You can’t help but wonder, if the U.S. Defense Department can be hacked and attacked from the inside-out,  just how safe is the personal data belonging to the average U.S. citizen?

Here are 10 tips from the Better Business Bureau to help keep you safe online not just during the holidays, but all year long.

The BBB offers this advice:

1. Protect your computer – A computer should always have the most recent updates installed for spam filters, anti-virus and anti-spyware software and a secure firewall.

2. Shop on trustworthy websites – Shoppers should start with BBB to check on the seller’s reputation and record for customer satisfaction. Always look for the BBB seal and other widely-recognized “trustmarks” on retailer websites and click on the seals to confirm that they are valid.

3. Protect your personal information – BBB recommends taking the time to read the site’s privacy policy and understand what personal information is being requested and how it will be used. If there isn’t one posted, it should be taken as a red flag that personal information may be sold to others without permission.

4. Beware of deals that sound too good to be true – Offers on websites and in unsolicited e-mails can often sound too good to be true, especially extremely low prices on hard-to-get items. Consumers should always go with their instincts and not be afraid to pass up a “deal” that might cost them dearly in the end.

5. Beware of phishing – Legitimate businesses do not send e-mails claiming problems with an order or an account to lure the “buyer” into revealing financial information. If a consumer receives such an e-mail, BBB recommends picking up the phone and calling the contact number on the website where the purchase was made to confirm that there really is a problem with the transaction.  Continue Reading…

December 7, 2010 in Cyberwar, Data security, Financial Crime

Cyber Battlefield In Our Own Backyard

With the war in Iraq winding down and the war in Afghanistan heating up, many of us are unaware of the cyber-war raging on our own home turf.  If this is old news to you, stay with me.

According to a Congressional committee, attacks on the Department of Defense computer systems jumped 60 percent in 2009.

Russia, China and North Korea have all launched sustained attacks on U.S. government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of the Treasury.

Analysts believe that security standards like the ones created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), should be implemented immediately. According to the experts, NIST could get us 90 percent closer to where we need to be.

In Congressional testimony earlier this year, former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said that we could be on the brink of an all-out cyberwar. McConnell’s view has been repudiated by the current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

If  Moore’s law is true,  (every 24 months a dollar buys twice the amount of computing power that it did before) our enemies may be able to buy, beg, borrow or hack twice as much of our data as  they can today for the same effort.

Computer scientist Daniel Geer Jr. aptly reveals what is at stake:

” We have spent centuries learning about securing the physical world, plus a few years learning about securing the digital world. What we know to be common to both is this: That which cannot be tolerated must be prevented.”

America’s most valued, electronically stored data is being targeted. Government agencies, private think tanks and university data warehouses are all vulnerable. The enemy operates from a distance with virtually no risk of personal danger.

What defense mechanisms can we construct to prevent our data from being stolen at the speed of light?

May 6, 2010 in Cyberwar, Data security

Cyberspies Working Overtime to Upset U.S. Power Grid

New threats to America’s power grid are surfacing daily. The folks at McAfee  spend most of their waking hours looking for ways to defend their clients from the never ending barrage of cyber-threats.

On the other hand, non- geeks simply want a worry-free, hacker-free Internet experience and we generally don’t care about the details of the international day to day battle of tech wits.

However, some tech experts on the front lines are alarmed these days. They have known about the foreign threat for years, but they have come to realize something that is both disturbing and revealing about our own willingness to fight back.

Elan Winkler over at McAfee surveyed 200 critical infrastructure IT professionals and discovered an eye opening attitude. These industry insiders blame cost and complacency for our predicament. Winkler states:

“So, if the people in the know, knew, how come we’re still vulnerable? I asked them that question as well. The number one answer: cost. Number two: complacency. No real surprises there; those are the same answers that we used to get from IT departments 15 years ago on why they didn’t have defense in depth technologies set up to protect servers and databases.”

The survey respondents also provided the following comments:

  • “There hasn’t been a real incident so no one takes it seriously.”
  • “Lack of knowledge and understanding.”
  • “Inability of decision makers to commit to security upgrades.”
  • “No one wants to pay for security.”
  • “False sense of security.”
  • “Security competes with other priorities for resources.”
  • “We, as Americans, believe we are invulnerable to this kind of attack.”

In neighborhoods across our great country,  most power outages are often simply a result of the forces of  Mother Nature. For example, a nasty December storm blew through our neighborhood just last night leaving about 700 homes in the dark, well into the night.

Imagine what could happen if our own complacency and budget constraints were to put the entire nation at risk.

Government’s job is to protect citizens from both foreign and domestic threats.  Our job is to support them in any way we can.

This pervasive, lazy attitude held by many inside the IT community, renders the term”computer geek” more laughable than it already is.

December 14, 2009 in Cyberwar

Looming Cyber-Threat Has Fed's Attention

Outgoing National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell reported last week that Cyber-threats are among his greatest concerns, second only to Iran’s continuing development of nuclear weapons.

MSNBC and the Associated Press reported:

“…Iran producing a nuclear weapon and a cyber attack on critical government or private computer networks top the list of concerns nagging at National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell as he prepares to leave office.”

There are many well intentioned observers who seem to think that cyber-crime in general is on the decline inside the United States. Although there is statistically no need for mass panic, it is foolish to assume that our computer infrastructure isn’t the greatest information target in the world. As a practical matter, I think we are all better off with “someone on the gate” to guard our repositories of personal, commercial,  educational, financial and military data.

The truth is that many potentially damaging breaches go undetected and are often intentionally unreported. Back in 2005, the Department of Homeland Security constructed a worst-case-scenario type cyber-attack and concluded that over 20 million credit cards might be affected over a period as short as just one week. The Department concluded that an event like this could undermine faith in the entire U.S. financial system.

We all pray that President Obama’s team remains watchful and vigilant on the cyber-front during these desperate times. The Obama Administration has already declared our nation’s cyber-infrastructure a “strategic asset” and has pledged to protect “America’s competitive advantage”.

Great start Mr. President.

January 22, 2009 in Cyberwar, Data Breaches, Federal Government

Relentless Fraudsters Begin The Assault

The New Year’s barrage arrives just days before President Obama is sworn in.

Today was unlike most days when I open my email, yawn and shrug my shoulders. This evening, my KEEN eye caught three names of email senders that I didn’t recognize. That generally means “junk or spam email, but today was different due to the sheer volume and ridiculously (laughable) transparency of these scammers.

These emails were online scams, so phony looking that anyone with “half-a-brain” could spot them a mile away. Three in one day! I had to look in a mirror to make sure the word “sucka” wasn’t pinned to my back.

Not only did the senders promise OUTRAGEOUS sums of money for my help, the spelllinngg was so bad that I actually laughed out loud.

Phishing scams come in many varieties including lottery scams, bill collector scams, fraud investigation scams, employment application scams, overseas bank transfer scams, credit card or banking verification scams and many  others.

According to the Yahoo Security Center:

“If you receive an email (or instant message) from someone you don’t know directing you to sign in to a web site, be careful! You may have received a phishing email with links to a phishing web site. A phishing web site (sometimes called a “spoofed” site) tries to steal your account password or other confidential information by tricking you into believing you’re on a legitimate web site. You can even land on a phishing site by mistyping a URL (web address).

Is that web site legitimate? Don’t be fooled by a site that looks real. It’s easy for phishers to create web sites that look like the genuine article, complete with the logos and other graphics of a trusted web site.”

Unfortunately, the current economic downturn is expected to cause a dramatic increase in the number and frequency of these fraudulent attempts to separate the uninformed from their personal data.

The good news is that these crimes are getting harder and harder to pull off, due to greater consumer awareness and more advanced spam filtering technologies.

Despite the almost comical transparency of the three scams that entered my email box today, the potential for harm and the growing frequency of these annoying ploys is really no laughing matter.

January 17, 2009 in Cyberwar

Forecasters Make ID Theft Predictions For 2009

Recently, the Identity Theft Resource Center looked forward to the coming year to predict events that will be the inevitable outcomes of the current economic crisis and the looming identity theft battles.

Real Estate: Homeowners who are behind on payments or seeking refinancing sources can easily fall prey to unscrupulous thieves who are more than willing to “take your information and see what we can do”. Bogus land grants and home equity scams will be commonplace. The recommendation is that homeowners speak directly with well known and established banking and mortgage companies in order to avoid the potential pitfalls of unknown solution providers.

Credit Cards: Many consumers may unknowingly turn to thieves in order to get access to credit cards, debit cards and debt consolidation loans. It is easy to imagine handing over private information to seemingly legitimate companies. Like the mortgage industry, the credit card world has been turned on it’s head in the current economic climate. Look before you “leap” into a deal that may be too good to be true.

Check Fraud: Due to the lack of easy credit, many thieves will turn to check fraud as a way to accomplish their crimes. Needless to say, safeguard your checkbook, deposit slips and banking statements as a first line of defense. Many financial advisers are steering clients away from using paper checks at all. If you must write paper checks, be sure to use an anti-check-washing gel pen and keep a close eye out for any irregularities on your statement.

Organized Crime and Cyber-Thieves- Rings of professional thieves from all over the world have helped make identity theft the fastest growing crime in the United States. Security experts agree that these attacks will become more brazen as time goes by. According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been reviewing “worst case scenarios” for possible attacks against U.S. government, industrial and financial institutions.

Consumer Scams: Common and rampant scams with nicknames such as skimming, phishing, vishing, pharming and whaling will continue in 2009. This is largely due to the weak condition of the U.S. economy, the vulnerability of average consumer and law enforcement’s scarcity of resources to deal with the sheer volume of complaints.

Breaches: Corporate, educational and government security breaches continue to grow every year. According to the ITRC, there were 641 breaches in 2008, surpassing the total of 446 in 2007. Due to the portability of data, the easy theft of laptops, the cunning deception of “inside scam artists” and the desperation of global perpetrators, this number will continue to increase. At the very least, have your own laptop or PDA/smart-phone set up with encryption and password protection software.

Remaining diligent, alert and informed about the latest scams and threats is your best defense against being victimized in 2009. Stay tuned.

January 4, 2009 in Cyberwar, Data Breaches, Federal Government

The Next Wave of Attacks

If the gatekeepers are concerned, we should be too!

If you haven’t seen reports of  the latest Identity Theft attacks plaguing our country, you haven’t been reading much news lately. Where have you been?

Even the U.S. Air Force has waged an ad campaign designed to capture the imagination of a new crop of tech savvy young recruits to help fight the current “cyber-war”. This war is not imagined or “virtual”, it is very real indeed.  

The battle is raging on many fronts. In addition to the constant daily threat from foreign governments, bored adolescent hackers and low level organized criminals, there is a new enemy emerging.

Symantec Corporation is losing sleep due to concerns about the next virulent strain of Trojan horse programs.  According to the April 2008 issue of PC Magazine, the Trojan.Silentbanker program can perform “man in the middle” attacks between users and more than 400 banks.

This Trojan monitors usage patterns on the web, while looking for bank data that it can manipulate. This program can actually re-route the account destination of banking customer transfers. Apparently, the Trojan.Silentbanker can even overcome the “safeguard” of two -factor authentication.

The article correctly distinguishes between a single bank target like those that are cloned by realistic looking “phishing” sites and the multiple bank sites susceptible to this Trojan program.

Symantec’s well known suite of anti-virus and personal firewall products are designed to protect from these threats. If you are not in the habit of updating yours, you are headed for a hard fall someday. PC Magazine also reminds never to run executables we get from strangers.

Thank goodness for warriors like our Air Force and Symantec who “sit on the wall” for us and fight evil at every turn, keeping us from losing more than just our shirts.

March 18, 2008 in Cyberwar, Data security