Technology Impacts

There was growing speculation [or distraction from the main issue of Global Warming fraud?] on Sunday that hackers working for the Russian secret service were responsible for the theft of controversial emails in the ‘Climategate’ scandal.

Thousands of emails, from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) were first published on a small server in the city of Tomsk in Siberia.

So-called ‘patriot hackers’ from Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service, the FSB, to attack websites disliked by the Kremlin, such as the “denial of service” campaign launched against the Kavkaz-Tsentr website, over its reports about the war in Chechnya, in 2002.

via Climategate: was Russian secret service behind email hacking plot? - Telegraph.

Bank customers are increasingly being duped into acting as “money mules” for hackers, unwittingly laundering cash stolen from business bank accounts, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation warned the nation’s financial institutions on Thursday.

Using specialized Trojan horse malware, cybercrooks have been intercepting web-banking credentials from the computers of small and midsize businesses, and then initiating wire transfers to mules around the country. The mules are consumers who’ve been lured into fake work-at-home scams, in which their employment involves receiving money transfers and then forwarding the funds to Eastern Europe, either directly or through other mules.

FDIC Warns Banks to Watch for ‘Money Mules’ Duped by Hackers | Threat Level | Wired.com.

WHEN Elaine Cioni found out her married boyfriend had other girlfriends she turned to YourHackerz.com.

For $US100, the website provided Cioni, then living in northern Virginia, with the password to her boyfriend’s AOL email account. For another $100, she got her boyfriend’s wife’s password. And then the password of another girlfriend and the boyfriend’s children.

Cioni began making harassing phone calls to her boyfriend and his family, using a ‘’spoofing” service to disguise her voice as a man’s. This attracted the attention of federal authorities, who prosecuted Cioni, 53, last year for unauthorised access to computers, among other crimes. She was convicted and is serving a 15-month sentence. Read the rest of this entry »

This video of hackers taking over the lighting controls in an urban skyscraper in order to play the world?s most awesome game of Space Invaders is ominous proof that intruders really are eyeing utility control systems as targets, warns security vendor McAfee. Read the rest of this entry »

The federal government introduced legislation in Parliament to “modernize” criminal procedure in Canada. What it means, among other things, is that police will get the authority to fingerprint suspects even before charges are laid. Bill C-31 amends the Identification of Criminals Act but oddly doesn’t rename it the Identification of Criminals and People We Don’t Have Enough Evidence to Charge Act.

From the DOJ:

via Canadian Privacy Law Blog: Government proposes to fingerprint before charges.

identity in crisis

Cnet reports on the latest cybercrime, Yes you read it correctly - V for …

You might have heard about online “phishing” scams designed to steal money from unsuspecting Web users, but now criminals are using another type of scam called “vishing” to commit the same crimes.

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission filed lawsuits against two telemarketing firms in Florida and a company claiming to sell extended automobile warranties for violating the Do Not Call registry and fraud for selling bogus warranties for between $2,000 and $3,000 a pop. Since 2007, the companies supposedly made 1 billion calls and generated more than $10 billion.

These companies likely used spoofed caller ID numbers to hide their identities from consumers and law enforcement authorities.

via Protecting yourself from vishing attacks | Wireless - CNET News.