Ramblings & ephemera
From Kim Zetter’s “New Malware Re-Writes Online Bank Statements to Cover Fraud” (Wired: 30 September 2009):
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 [...]
Posted on October 30th, 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 a Special Operations officer quoted in Tom Ricks’s Inbox (The Washington Post: 5 October 2008):
One of the most interesting operations was the laundry mat [sic]. Having lost many troops and civilians to bombings, the Brits decided they needed to determine who was making the bombs and where they were being manufactured. One bright fellow [...]
Posted on February 12th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Damien Carrick’s interview with Nicholas Johnson, “The psychology of conmen” (The Law Report: 30 September 2008):
Nicholas Johnson: I think what I love most about con artists and the world of scammers is that they’re criminals who manage to get their victims to hand over their possessions freely. Most thieves and robbers and the like, [...]
Posted on February 12th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
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From Paul J. Zak’s “How to Run a Con” (Psychology Today: 13 November 2008):
When I was in high school, I took a job at an ARCO gas station on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, California. At the time, I drove a 1967 Mustang hotrod and thought I might pick up some tips and cheap parts [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
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From Chapter 2: Botnets Overview of Craig A. Schiller’s Botnets: The Killer Web App (Syngress: 2007):
Dollar-Revenue and GimmyCash are two companies that have paid for installation of their Adware programs. Each has a pay rate formula based on the country of installation. Dollar-Revenue pays 30 cents for installing their adware in a U. S. [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security, tech in changing society | No Comments »
From Bruce Schneier’s “Hacking Computers Over USB” (Crypto-Gram: 15 June 2005):
From CSO Magazine:
“Plug an iPod or USB stick into a PC running Windows and the device can literally take over the machine and search for confidential documents, copy them back to the iPod or USB’s internal storage, and hide them as “deleted” files. Alternatively, the [...]
Posted on December 10th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Tom Stites’s “Guest Posting: Is Media Performance Democracy’s Critical Issue?” (Center for Citizen Media: Blog: 3 July 2006):
And then there were [Walter] Annenberg’s political shenanigans – he shamelessly used his news columns [in The Philadelphia Inquirer] to embarrass candidates who dared to run against his favorites. One day in 1966 a Democrat named Milton [...]
Posted on July 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Bruce Schneier’s “News” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 April 2006):
Undercover investigators were able to smuggle radioactive materials into the U.S. It set off alarms at border checkpoints, but the smugglers had forged import licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, based on an image of the real document they found on the Internet. Unfortunately, the border agents [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From The Inquirer’s “Killer phrase will fill your PC with spam”:
THERE IS ONE phrase which, if you type into any search engine will expose your PC to shed-loads of spam, according to a new report.
Researchers Ben Edelman and Hannah Rosenbaum reckon that typing the phrase “Free Screensavers” into any search engine is the equivalent of [...]
Posted on May 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From CAIDA’s “The Spread of the Witty Worm“:
On Friday March 19, 2004 at approximately 8:45pm PST, an Internet worm began to spread, targeting a buffer overflow vulnerability in several Internet Security Systems (ISS) products, including ISS RealSecure Network, RealSecure Server Sensor, RealSecure Desktop, and BlackICE. The worm takes advantage of a security flaw in [...]
Posted on May 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Information Week’s’ “ Trojan Snags World Of Warcraft Passwords To Cash Out Accounts“:
A new password-stealing Trojan targeting players of the popular online game “World of Warcraft” hopes to make money off secondary sales of gamer goods, a security company warned Tuesday.
MicroWorld, an Indian-based anti-virus and security software maker with offices in the U.S., [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Bruce Schneier’s “Automobile Identity Theft“:
This scam was uncovered in Israel:
1. Thief rents a car.
2. An identical car, legitimately owned, is found and its “identity” stolen.
3. The stolen identity is applied to the rented car and is then offered for sale in a newspaper ad.
4. Innocent buyer purchases the car from the thief as a [...]
Posted on April 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (399):
No wheeze was too old for [John Bankhead] Magruder to employ it. One morning he sent a column along a road that was heavily wooded except for a single gap in plain view of the enemy outposts. All day the gray files swept past in [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (384):
When [Pierre Gustave Toutant de Beauregard's men] stole out of the intrenchments [at Corinth] after nightfall, they left dummy guns in the embrasures and dummy cannoneers to serve them, fashioned by stuffing ragged uniforms with straw. A single band moved up and down the deserted [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From “Operations of the Western Flotilla” by Henry A. Walke, Commander of the Carondelet, describing the Battle of Island Number Ten:
Having received written orders from the flag-officer, under date of March 30th, I at once began to prepare the Carondelet for the ordeal. All the loose material at hand was collected, and on the 4th [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (287-288):
[At the Battle of Pea Ridge,] they saw the rebels coming, yelling and firing as they came, hundreds of them bearing down to complete the wreckage their artillery had begun. As the Federals fell back from their shattered pieces an Iowa cannoneer paused to toss [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (244):
[Lincoln's Secretary of War Edwin McMasters] Stanton had done devious things in his time. A corporation lawyer, he delighted also in taking criminal cases when these were challenging and profitable enough. His fees were large and when one prospective client protested, Stanton asked, “Do you [...]
Posted on April 23rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From The Atlantic’s “Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?” (February 1982):
The diamond invention – the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem – is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only [...]
Posted on April 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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From Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: Fort Sumter to Perryville (138):
[John Slidell] was aptly named, being noted for his slyness. At the outbreak of hostilities, back in the spring, an English journalist called him, “a man of iron will and strong passions, who loves the excitement of combinations and who, in his dungeon, or whatever [...]
Posted on April 16th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
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