http://www.databreaches.net/?p=12372
IN: Card breach linked to national company
July 2, 2010 by admin
Kristin Maiorano reports:
A local security breach with credit and debit cards has been linked to a national company.
Lafayette Police detective B.T. Brown said the security issue affected the Camilles Sidewalk Cafe restaurants in the area. But Brown said the breach was strictly through Camilles’ parent company, Beautiful Brands International.
“They [local Camilles franchises] had no knowledge of the breach until they were contacted by their corporate office,” he said. “These people were affected from California clear across the United States to New York.”
The people affected were customers at Camilles Sidewalk Cafe restaurants, including some in Tippecanoe County. But Brown said it’s a national issue that’s out of the hands of local law enforcement.
“The information that is sent to the financial institutions is being forwarded to the Secret Service,” he said.
“We are working with Visa and Mastercard and the United States Secret Service to stop that breach and prosecute the people responsible,” said Robert Sartin, the attorney for Beautiful Brands International.
Sartin said the credit and debit card breach has likely affected fewer than 20 stores across the country. He said the issue has not been linked to any employees or owners of Camilles restaurants, or any employees at Beautiful Brands.
“We believe, based on the evidence we’ve seen so far, that computer hackers have infiltrated the credit card processing system,” Sartin said. “And we believe that we’ll be able to stop that in the future.”
Read more on WLFI.
Interestingly, I had been tipped that Beautiful Brands had been breached almost two months ago, but when I contacted Beautiful Brands, they never returned my phone calls, and their PR representative, despite promising to respond, never got back to me after numerous attempts and reminders. So now they are saying that they believe they’ll be able to stop the infiltration of the POS “in the future?” When exactly did they secure the system this time around? For how long was their system compromised without their knowledge?
[From the article:
Sartin said the company hopes to contain the problem nationally within a couple of weeks. He said the investigation into who's behind the crimes will be complete shortly after that happens.
… He said the security breach has affected about five local financial institutions to the scale of more than $100,000, but he hasn't seen a local debit or credit card complaint for several weeks. [So this has been going on for a LONG time! Bob]
Is this also related to a payment processor?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Credit-Card-Breach-at-Destination-Hotels-Resorts-145843.shtml
Credit Card Breach at Destination Hotels & Resorts
PoS processing system affected
June 30th, 2010, 15:22 GMT
Unidentified hackers have managed to compromise the credit card processing system at Destination Hotels & Resorts. The company, which operates a chain of hotels in the United States, claims that only credit cards that were physically swiped were affected.
Destination is headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, but runs over thirty hotels and resorts nationwide, including in popular vacation spots like Aspen, Lake Tahoe or Maui. In a press release posted on its website, the company announced that it was the victim of a credit card fraud scheme, which involved malware being installed into its point-of-sale processing system. It appears that the attackers operated remotely.
… We know we are not the first hotel company to be victimized by this kind of attack... [We just assumed we didn't need security... Bob'
Another case of “Were the school, so we know best. Parents are ignorant, so we need to show them how to 'parent.'”
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=11976
Big Brother row as ‘food police’ secretly photograph schoolchildren’s packed lunches
July 2, 2010 by Dissent
Sarah Harris:
Teachers have used ‘Big Brother’ tactics to secretly spy on children’s lunch boxes, it has been revealed.
They have covertly photographed pupils’ packed lunches over the last six months and analysed the contents.
Staff have awarded marks to the food and then revealed their findings to outraged parents, offering them advice on how to improve nutrition.
Education bosses have now put a stop to the scheme in Gloucestershire after discovering the extent of the surveillance.
Read more in the Daily Mail.
No skulking here! “We're going to listen to your phonecalls and read your email.” ...and you thought Facebook was bad.
Indian Government Threatens RIM, Skype With Ban
Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 02, @06:16PM
"India's Department of Telecommunications has been asked by the government to serve a notice to Skype and Research In Motion to ensure that their email and other data services comply with formats that can be read by security and intelligence agencies, or face a ban in India if they do not comply within 15 days. A similar notice is also being sent to Google, asking it to provide access to content on Gmail in a readable format."
Colleges are moving everything online – classes, libraries and textbooks for example. This requires them to severely limit the capabilities of their networks. Could my Ethical Hacking class find a way around the controls? Should they have to?
Colleges Risk Losing Federal Funding If They Don't Fight Piracy
Posted by Soulskill on Friday July 02, @04:50PM
"The US government is making colleges and universities join in the fight against digital piracy by threatening to pull federal funding. Beginning this month, a provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 requires colleges to have plans to combat unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials on their networks. Colleges that don't do enough could lose their eligibility for federal student aid. 'Their options include taking steps to limit how much bandwidth can be consumed by peer-to-peer networking, monitoring traffic, using a commercial product to reduce or block illegal file sharing or "vigorously" responding to copyright infringement notices from copyright holders.'"
'cause it's the best or 'cause it's the best that's not Microsoft?
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63144
Firefox: The official web browser of IBM
An intresting TED talk to motivate my students?
http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/024635.html
July 03, 2010
Clay Shirky: How cognitive surplus will change the world
"Clay Shirky looks at "cognitive surplus" -- the shared, online work we do with our spare brain cycles. While we're busy editing Wikipedia, posting to Ushahidi (and yes, making LOLcats), we're building a better, more cooperative world."
This means I'd have to look at my students? (shudder)
Friday, July 2, 2010
A Simple Guide to Google Video Chat
Google Video Chat is a nice alternative to Skype available to anyone using Gmail. Some folks aren't aware of how easy it is to video chat using Google Video Chat. Therefore, yesterday Google released a simple video guide and PDF guide about it.
Phoney email is okay? Perhaps they get “anonymous”
http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/wheatt-com-a-new-way-to-bookmark-content
Wheatt.com - A New Way To Bookmark Content
Terming Wheatt the result of fusing together a search engine and a read-it-later app is the best way there is to introduce it to you. By installing the provided bookmarklet you will be capable of finding specific information within any page that you are reading, and the ability to tag what you have found will let you access the information more naturally later on.
That is, when you are on a page that you find interesting you just use the bookmarklet to add these tags that you think will let you find the information more succinctly afterwards. You can work with dates, domains, words… it is all taken into account.
Installing Wheatt is a mere matter of dragging and dropping the bookmarklet that is provided into your browser’s toolbar, and signing up by submitting an email address and a password. It is interesting to note that you are not required to supply a working email at all - just make sure to remember the password. That will do the trick. No fees have to be paid for using this service, and no other kind of information is ever requested.