Ramblings & ephemera
From Robert X. Cringely’s “Stream On“: Yet nearly everything we do to combat crime or enhance safety comes at the expense of reduced efficiency. So we build airports to make possible efficient air transportation, then set up metal detectors to slow down the flow of passengers. We build highways to make car travel faster, then […]
Posted on September 8th, 2011 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on Better security = reduced efficiency
From Russell Nelson’s comment to Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram of 15 November 2003: > A New York detective was once asked whether pickpockets in > Manhattan dressed in suits and ties to facilitate their crimes > subsequent escape. He responded by saying that in twenty years > he had never arrested even one pickpocket in a […]
Posted on September 8th, 2011 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on What seems obvious in security often is not
From Roger Ebert’s “Detour (1945)” (The Chicago Sun-Times: 7 June 1998): The difference between a crime film and a noir film is that the bad guys in crime movies know they’re bad and want to be, while a noir hero thinks he’s a good guy who has been ambushed by life.
Posted on September 3rd, 2010 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, language & literature | Comments Off on The difference between crime films & noir
From Robert E. Lauder’s interview with Woody Allen, “Whatever Works” (Commonweal: 15 April 2010): Well, you know, you want some kind of relief from the agony and terror of human existence. Human existence is a brutal experience to me…it’s a brutal, meaningless experience—an agonizing, meaningless experience with some oases, delight, some charm and peace, but […]
Posted on August 13th, 2010 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, language & literature, religion | Comments Off on Woody Allen’s atheism
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 […]
Posted on November 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, law, tech in changing society | Comments Off on Bernie Madoff & the 1st worldwide Ponzi scheme
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 […]
Posted on October 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security, tech in changing society | Comments Off on Australian police: don’t bank online with Windows
Image via Wikipedia 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, […]
Posted on July 15th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: law, politics, religion, security | Comments Off on A beheading in Saudi Arabia
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 […]
Posted on July 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, law, science, security | Comments Off on Various confidence scams, tricks, & frauds
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 […]
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, security, tech in changing society | Comments Off on Stolen credit card data is cheaper than ever in the Underground
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 […]
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, commonplace book, language & literature, religion, science | Comments Off on Roger Ebert on death
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 […]
Posted on April 26th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, science, security | Comments Off on German twins commit the perfect crime
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. […]
Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, security, tech in changing society | Comments Off on Criminal goods & service sold on the black market
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 […]
Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, security, tech in changing society | Comments Off on $9 million stolen from 130 ATM machines in 49 cities in 30 minutes
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 […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on The end of Storm
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 […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on The end of Storm?
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 […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on Three top botnets
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 […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on Number of bots drops 20% on Christmas
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 […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on 1/4 of all Internet computers part of a botnet?
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, […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on Prices for various services and software in the underground
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 […]
Posted on February 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off on Criminals working together to improve their tools