This was originally reported as 3,000 names. In almost all circumstances that number grows.
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080311190646316
(update) 40,000 names, Social Security numbers on stolen computer
Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 07:06 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
FULLERTON Police today filed possession of stolen property charges against a prison parolee who was arrested for having a computer – with more than 40,000 names, addresses and Social Security numbers of California residents, [bad writing Bob] Sgt. Linda King said.
Todd Irvine, 43, was taken into custody after Fullerton detectives served a search warrant at his La Habra residence in the 700 block of La Serna Avenue.
The original window-smash-style commercial burglary of Systematic Automation Inc., a data processing firm in Fullerton, allegedly occurred on Feb. 11, King said. The suspect was arrested Friday.
The firm prints individualized annual statements customized for employees with a summary of their health and other employee benefits. Nineteen companies, Systematic Automation customers, had employee information stored on the stolen hard drive.
Source - ocregister
[From the article:
Fullerton detectives learned the stolen computer had been accessing the Internet. Detectives located an IP address for the computer on La Serna Avenue in La Habra. [Suggesting the laptop had some “phone home” software installed... Bob]
When is a laptop theft more than a laptop theft? (and can anyone ethically assume otherwise?)
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=2008031119580664
(follow-up) UK: MoD confirms data of 63,000 recruits at risk
Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 07:58 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
MORE than 63,000 potential recruits whose names, addresses, passport numbers and other personal details were on a Ministry of Defence laptop stolen in Birmingham in January went on to serve in the forces and could now be prime terrorist targets, The Herald has learned.
The revelation, in the wake of one foiled Islamic extremist plot to abduct and murder a British soldier in the same city, shows that more than 10% of the 600,000 named on the laptop's hard-drive [Aren't they all at risk? Bob] subsequently enlisted, although the MoD says it does not have information to hand on how many are still in uniform.
... The MoD said yesterday there is no evidence that any of the bank, national insurance, passport or home address details on any of these databases has since been used for identity-theft criminal activity or by extremists seeking "soft" targets.
Emergency telephone numbers have been issued to affected service personnel for use if they suspect anyone is shadowing them or their families.
Source - The Herald Related - 11,000 military ID cards lost or stolen
[From the Article:
The missing Birmingham database dates back to 1997 and is one of three military laptops containing potentially damaging personal details stolen since 2005.
The MoD delayed telling thousands of RAF and Royal Navy servicemen and women that their personal details had been compromised by the theft of a laptop in Manchester two years ago because it believed the hard-drive was encrypted.
Tools & Techniques (Also says some interesting things about risk...)
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/11/1616220&from=rss
Casino Insider Tells (Almost) All About Security
Posted by Zonk on Tuesday March 11, @01:02PM from the tech-of-the-gambling-floor dept. Security Technology
An anonymous reader writes
"ComputerWorld has up a story on casino security technology, exploring the world of facial recognition technology and various other systems in casinos such as the Bellagio, Treasure Island, and Beau Rivage. Industry veteran Jeff Jonas reveals some of the secret scams he learned from the casino industry such as the infinite hundred dollar bill, the hollowed out chip cup, the palm (trading cards), the specialty code (inserted by rogue programmer into video poker machine) and the cameraman, as well as detailing how casinos strike back against fraudsters and cheats.'"
[From the article:
"They didn't detect this as it happened," Jonas said. "Most of the videos the casinos collect are just used forensically. When the table loses a quarter of a million dollars they go back and replay it nice and slow, see that little piece of video, and it's time to make some calls. In the old days it was the kneecaps, but those were the old, old days." [Video surveillance is rarely preventative. Bob]
... The infinite hundred-dollar bill: One team took US$1.2 million off a casino in two weeks when it discovered that a new hundred-dollar bill could be fed into a certain slot machine and, if you hit a button at just the right time, the machine would give the player US$100 worth of credit while spitting the actual US$100 bill right back into the player's hands. [My kind of hack Bob]
Find 'em, kill 'em (What else is there?)
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017784.html
March 11, 2008
Air Force Releases Strategic Vision for Cyber Command
News release: "Because warfighters rely on cyberspace to conduct the command and control of its forces, officials have outlined the strategic vision for the new Air Force Cyber Command. "Mastery of cyberspace is essential to America's national security," said Maj. Gen. William T. Lord, AFCYBER (provisional) commander who's charged with bringing the command to operational status later this fall... He said the Air Force Cyber Command Strategic Vision lays the foundation for the work that is ahead and postures the command to be fully operational in 2009. The document also details the meaning behind its vision statement: "Secure Our Nation by Emplying World-Class Cyberspace Capabilities to Control Cyberspace, Create Integrated Global Effects and Deliver Sovereign Options."
Related (Technologies evolve, governments react)
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080304/164039436.shtml
Chinese Going Off The Official Telco System To Call Taiwan
from the time-for-the-great-voice-firewall dept
Paul Kedrosky points us to the news that, for the first time in 11 years, the "official" volume of phone calls from China to Taiwan has dropped rather significantly. Both the Digitimes report and Kedrosky suspect (reasonably) that this shows how many Chinese are jumping to use services like Skype to make these calls. Skype has long had a popular following in China, so this shouldn't be a huge surprise -- but it does make you wonder if the Chinese government will follow the path of various countries like Bangladesh, Belarus, Namibia and Jordan in banning Skype. We've already seen some experiments in China with blocking or banning certain types of calls. If the government feels that too many people are using these services, don't be surprised to see a wider ban enacted.
Related
BlackBerry under security scrutiny in India
Government in the region is demanding access to encryption algorithms, messages on its service
By John Ribeiro, IDG News Service March 12, 2008
Indian government officials, telecommunications service providers, and executives of Research in Motion (RIM) are expected to meet on Friday to work out a solution to demands from the Indian government that it should have access to, and the ability to intercept, mails sent over RIM's BlackBerry service, according to a report on Wednesday in an Indian newspaper, Business Standard.
Related (Of course, we also do this to ourselves... Think of this as outsourcing record keeping to Google?)
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1720932,00.html
How Google Earth Ate Our Town
Monday, Mar. 10, 2008 By ROB SHAW
... The city's planning department has, over the past five years, steadily fed Google a wealth of information about its buildings, property lines, utilities and streets. The result is earth.nanaimo.ca, a clearinghouse of city data viewed through the robust and freely available Google Earth 3D mapping program. The site sorts and maps every business, from restaurants to car dealers, while a click of the mouse brings up the lot size for every property in the city, including the building permit number and zoning history.
Now your dossier is much more complete...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20080311115203764
Google wins Commission approval, closes DoubleClick deal
Tuesday, March 11 2008 @ 11:52 AM EDT
Contributed by: PrivacyNews
News Section: Businesses & Privacy
Google's acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick has been passed by European competition regulators and has been completed. The deal had already been passed by competition authorities in the US.
The European Commission has more stringent competition rules than US authorities but it has said that the merger is permissible because Google and DoubleClick are not direct competitors and there is enough competition in the market for online advertising services.
Google confirmed that the deal has now been completed.
Source - Out-Law.com
Related - C|net
Don't forget to back it all up!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/1234228&from=rss
Stored Data to Exceed 1.8 Zettabytes by 2011
Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday March 12, @08:44AM from the less-than-eighty-percent-porn dept. Data Storage IT
jcatcw writes
"By 2011, there will be 1.8 zettabytes of electronic data stored in 20 quadrillion files, packets or other containers because of, among other things, the massive growth rate of social networks, and digital equipment such as cameras, cell phones and televisions, according to a new study by IDC. Data is growing by a factor of 10 every five years. According to John Gantz, IDC's lead analyst, "at some point in the life of every file, or bit or packet, 85% of that information somewhere goes through a corporate computer, website, network or asset," meaning any given corporation becomes responsible for protecting large amounts of data that it and its customers may not have created. The study, which coincided with the launch of a " digital footprint" calculator, also found that as the world changes over to digital televisions, analog sets and obsolete set-top boxes and DVDs "will be heaped on the waste piles, which will double by 2011.""
There has always been an assumption that music and math were related...
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/12/0141202&from=rss
The Geometry of Music
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 12, @05:26AM from the fantasia-with-strings dept.
An anonymous reader notes a Time.com profile of Princeton University music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko, who has applied some string-theory math to the study of music and found that all possible chordal music can be represented in a higher-dimensional space. His research was published last year in Science — it was the first paper on music theory they ever ran. The paper and background material, including movies, can be viewed at Tymoczko's site.
I'm not sure if this is an historical analysis or just a cheap bid to sell magazines...
A Timeline of Politicians and Prostitutes
Posted March 11, 2008
Compiled by the U.S. News & World Report library staff
Related Making money off the news... (The New York Times web site was almost crashed due to the volume of interest in this story...)
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/03/client-9-client.html
Client 9 Domains Snatched Minutes After Spitzer Scandal Breaks
By Betsy Schiffman March 11, 2008 | 1:58:44 PM
Just minutes after the New York Times published a story online yesterday about a high-class prostitution ring and the involvement of so-called "Client 9," Nick Galbreath, a 37 year-old software engineer in Manhattan, registered the client9.com domain for $10.13.
"The original story didn't name [Governor Eliot] Spitzer directly, but I thought [Client9.com] sounded catchy, so I bought it."
Related Interesting stuff, but you have to read between the lines. Note that transactions BELOW the “$10,000 reporting threshold” were used to build this case. Making me wonder why they were reported if they were below the threshold?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8211
March 11th, 2008
How an information system helped nail Eliot Spitzer and a prostitution ring
Posted by Larry Dignan @ 9:02 am
Is this the start of a vast conspiracy to get men to do the shopping?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080311/ap_on_fe_st/beer_tasting;_ylt=AhsqphBUpdrRWyHSZRbd78Ks0NUE
Sample the beer before you buy it
Tue Mar 11, 7:33 AM ET
OLYMPIA, Wash. - Washington lawmakers have approved a pilot program that will allow beer and wine tasting in 30 grocery stores statewide in an effort to market local products.
... The one-year program, strongly supported by the state's microbrewery and wine industries, allows shoppers to sample as much as 4 ounces of beer or wine.
As my web site class winds down, a few students are (as usual) considering putting their site online...
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/017774.html
March 11, 2008
Tail Report - Survey of Web Revenue
"Tail Report has launched with the goal to map out how money is made in the blogosphere. Tail Report works by asking users to anonymously submit information about their site's traffic, rank and monthly revenue. In return, the user receives a custom report detailing what other websites are making and how their revenue compares based a number of factors, such as traffic, rank, number of RSS subscribers, age, number of employees, content, and ad networks."
This is not the only “Gas price reporter”
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/Gasnearucom---Compare-Local-Gas-Prices/
Gasnearu.com - Compare Local Gas Prices
The site asks you to enter in your zip code, and then returns a list of results that sort the gas stations in your area, from least expensive to most expensive per gallon. GasNearU organizes the petroleum company and station, the address, the price for unleaded gasoline, and, if applicable, the prices from plus, premium, and diesel. The price results are current and updated daily.
No comments:
Post a Comment