Ramblings & ephemera
From Diana B. Henrioques’s “Madoff Scheme Kept Rippling Outward, Across Borders” (The New York Times: 20 December 2008):
But whatever else Mr. Madoff’s game was, it was certainly this: The first worldwide Ponzi scheme — a fraud that lasted longer, reached wider and cut deeper than any similar scheme in history, entirely eclipsing the puny regional [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Munir Kotadia’s “NSW Police: Don’t use Windows for internet banking” (ITnews: 9 October 2009):
Consumers wanting to safely connect to their internet banking service should use Linux or the Apple iPhone, according to a detective inspector from the NSW Police, who was giving evidence on behalf of the NSW Government at the public hearing into [...]
Posted on October 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Adam St. Patrick’s “Chop Chop Square: Inside Saudi Arabia’s brutal justice system” (The Walrus: May 2009):
This is Saudi Arabia, one of the last places on earth where capital punishment is a public spectacle. Decapitation awaits murderers, but the death penalty also applies to many other crimes, such as armed robbery, rape, adultery, [...]
Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From “List of confidence tricks” (Wikipedia: 3 July 2009):
Get-rich-quick schemes
Get-rich-quick schemes are extremely varied. For example, fake franchises, real estate “sure things”, get-rich-quick books, wealth-building seminars, self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products, chain letters, fortune tellers, quack doctors, miracle pharmaceuticals, Nigerian money scams, charms and talismans are all used to separate the mark from his [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Brian Krebs’ “Glut of Stolen Banking Data Trims Profits for Thieves” (The Washington Post: 15 April 2009):
A massive glut in the number of credit and debit cards stolen in data breaches at financial institutions last year has flooded criminal underground markets that trade in this material, driving prices for the illicit goods to the [...]
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Roger Ebert’s “Go gentle into that good night” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 2 May 2009):
What I expect will most probably happen [when I die] is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function, and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. Perhaps I [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From “Twins Suspected in Spectacular Jewelry Heist Set Free” (Spiegel Online International: 19 March 2009):
Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist have been set free. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence.
German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may [...]
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Ellen Messmer’s “Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with ‘Underground Economy’ report” (Network World: 24 November 2008):
The “Underground Economy” report [from Symantec] contains a snapshot of online criminal activity observed from July 2007 to June 2008 by a Symantec team monitoring activities in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based forums where stolen goods are advertised. Symantec [...]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Catey Hill’s “Massive ATM heist! $9M stolen in only 30 minutes” (New York Daily News: 12 February 2009)
With information stolen from only 100 ATM cards, thieves made off with $9 million in cash, according to published reports. It only took 30 minutes.
“We’ve seen similar attempts to defraud a bank through ATM machines but not, [...]
Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Brian Krebs’ “Atrivo Shutdown Hastened Demise of Storm Worm” (The Washington Post: 17 October 2008):
The infamous Storm worm, which powered a network of thousands of compromised PCs once responsible for sending more than 20 percent of all spam, appears to have died off. Security experts say Storm’s death knell was sounded by the recent [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From “Storm Worm botnet cracked wide open” (Heise Security: 9 January 2009):
A team of researchers from Bonn University and RWTH Aachen University have analysed the notorious Storm Worm botnet, and concluded it certainly isn’t as invulnerable as it once seemed. Quite the reverse, for in theory it can be rapidly eliminated using software developed and [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Kelly Jackson Higgins’ “The World’s Biggest Botnets” (Dark Reading: 9 November 2007):
You know about the Storm Trojan, which is spread by the world’s largest botnet. But what you may not know is there’s now a new peer-to-peer based botnet emerging that could blow Storm away.
“We’re investigating a new peer-to-peer botnet that may wind up [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Robert Lemos’ “Bot-infected PCs get a refresh” (SecurityFocus: 28 December 2006):
On Christmas day, the number of bots tracked by the Shadowserver group dropped nearly 20 percent.
The dramatic decrease in weekly totals–from more than 500,000 infected systems to less than 400,000 computers–puzzled researchers. The Internet Storm Center, a threat monitoring group managed by the SANS [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Nate Anderson’s “Vint Cerf: one quarter of all computers part of a botnet” (Ars Technica: 25 January 2007):
The BBC’s Tim Weber, who was in the audience of an Internet panel featuring Vint Cerf, Michael Dell, John Markoff of the New York Times, and Jon Zittrain of Oxford, came away most impressed by the botnet [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Tom Espiner’s “Cracking open the cybercrime economy” (CNET News: 14 December 2007):
“Over the years, the criminal elements, the ones who are making money, making millions out of all this online crime, are just getting stronger and stronger. I don’t think we are really winning this war.”
As director of antivirus research for F-Secure, you might [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Dan Goodin’s “Crimeware giants form botnet tag team” (The Register: 5 September 2008):
The Rock Phish gang – one of the net’s most notorious phishing outfits – has teamed up with another criminal heavyweight called Asprox in overhauling its network with state-of-the-art technology, according to researchers from RSA.
Over the past five months, Rock Phishers have [...]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Jake Adelstein’s “This Mob Is Big in Japan” (The Washington Post: 11 May 2008):
Most Americans think of Japan as a law-abiding and peaceful place, as well as our staunch ally, but reporting on the underworld gave me a different perspective. Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in [...]
Posted on February 6th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From John Harlow’s “Amateur crimefighters are surging in the US” (The Times: 28 December 2008):
There are, according to the recently launched World Superhero Registry, more than 200 men and a few women who are willing to dress up as comic book heroes and patrol the urban streets in search of, if not super-villains, then pickpockets [...]
Posted on January 4th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Stephen J. Dubner’s interview with Bruce Schneier in “Bruce Schneier Blazes Through Your Questions” (The New York Times: 4 December 2007):
Basically, you’re asking if crime pays. Most of the time, it doesn’t, and the problem is the different risk characteristics. If I make a computer security mistake — in a book, for a consulting [...]
Posted on December 17th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From The Economist’s “The price of online robbery” (24 November 2008):
Bank details are the most popular single item for sale by online fraudsters, according to a new report by Symantec, an internet-security firm. They are also the priciest, perhaps because the average account for which details are offered has a balance of nearly $40,000. Sales [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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