identity

Behind the scenes of online fraud

I sat down on Thursday with someone who watches the underground criminals who are trying to break into people's bank accounts and steal their money. And the picture isn't pretty.

Online fraudsters are coming up with more types of dangerous attacks and more sophisticated methods, says Uri Rivner, head of new technologies for RSA Consumer Solutions, which is owned by EMC.

I've already written about how the cybercriminals are borrowing organizational structures from the mafia and even legitimate businesses, and have further explored the threats from identity fraud. Rivner filled in some details with his assessment of how the fraudsters are operating. He talked about the "Fraud Supply Chain" in which harvesters steal the data and then sell it to people who are expert at turning the data into cash by emptying out the bank accounts.

The two sides of this e-commerce underground communicate via informal marketplaces on IRC Chat channels. They also share information on sites like "Carder's Market," where you can read industry blogs and even reviews of Trojans and other malware.

Fraudsters aren't just targeting bank customers. They are also luring victims off social networks, where they harvest sensitive private information, and online gaming sites, where they steal accomplished avatars and accounts and sell them for money, Rivner says.

Another recent trend is the blending of phishing and malware on spoof Web sites that look legitimate but prompt visitors to run an executable in order to see a video, for instance. Instead, the executable is a Trojan that can grab the sensitive data on the computer. The recent "Obama sex video" spam is an example of this. … Read more

Egonomics and the "Recognition Economy"

In May this year, frog design founder Hartmut Esslinger spoke at the German Trend Day in Hamburg. The Trend Day is an influential annual forum that gathers thought leaders from business, media, and academia to discuss emerging social and cultural trends. This year's theme was "Identity Management," and other speakers besides Hartmut included Richard Florida, Danny Choo, and David Bosshart.

The organizers have synthesized the research, interviews, and lectures of the two-day symposium into a manifesto that is worth reading:

http://www.slideshare.net/TrendBuero/identity-management-manifesto-presentation

The paper argues that today's "attention economy" will … Read more

Arizona death notices taken offline on ID fraud concerns

Digital copies of death certificates have been removed from the Web site of Maricopa County in Arizona because they could be used for identity fraud, The Arizona Republic reported on Wednesday.

"There is so much personal information on them: a mother's maiden name, what they died from," said Helen Purcell, recorder for Maricopa County, which covers the state capital, Phoenix.

The county had received complaints from people about the posting of the information for years and removed them last month, she said. The state has one of the highest identity fraud rates in the country.

The County … Read more

Transitioning to identity-based networking

Network access control (NAC) has certainly had a boisterous lifetime.

Cisco Systems first coined this term in 2005 when introducing an initiative to ensure that only "healthy" endpoints could access the network. In the intervening years, the NAC concept gained popularity, drove tremendous VC investment, and most recently came crashing down in a micro boom-to-bust cycle.

So what's the future for NAC? Out of the ashes, NAC is slowly changing and moving in the right direction toward identity-based networking. Rather than a myopic security tool, identity-based networking initiatives:

Span the enterprise. NAC was primarily based upon … Read more

Oracle is grabbing a lead spot in identity management

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Oracle dabbled in the identity space with database access controls and a network directory. But it really wasn't considered a player in this space.

This changed in 2005 when Oracle acquired its way into identity management with the purchase of Oblix and Thor Technologies. Even with these acquisitions, many industry watchers never thought that Oracle could buy its way into the market and weave disparate products into an integrated suite.

Once again, common wisdom was completely wrong. While others struggle or abandon this space, Oracle has vaulted to a leadership position. In fact, … Read more

The 404 148: Where MTI is livid and covered in toilet paper

Mark is finally back from his 10 year sabbatical, so we have him on as a guest on today's show to talk about the much deserved practical joke we pulled on him (see post below). He also gives a shout out to Papa Licea and tells us a few stories about his trip. The rest of us get into a rather heated discussion about RoboCop and Batman, give a public service announcement on child abuse, reminisce about a time not so long ago when we worked for pennies, and daydream out loud about all the sinister things we could … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 758: Return of the living MicroHoo

The rotten corpse of the Microsoft-Yahoo merger has apparently reanimated itself and is wandering down Wall Street, munching on the brains of News Corp. and Time Warner, recruiting them to its unholy cause. Sigh. In other news, Microsoft has a new Office subscription service, Blockbuster decided Circuit City just isn't worth it, and we debunk the Texas PC repair hysteria that's sweeping the blogosphere. Listen now: Download today's podcast

EPISODE 758

Microsoft seeks partners for new run at Yahoo http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121496732802022117.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9982741-7.html

Office subscription service ready to … Read more

What's in a (concocted) name?

I work for frog design, and frequently at conferences and parties, people ask me about the name: What does it mean? Where does it come from? While some suspect it symbolizes the agility of that animal species, the truth is that our German founder, Hartmut Esslinger, coined it as an acronym for "federal republic of germany" -- the lower case spelling of "frog" referencing the egalitarian tradition of Marxist semantics, back then in the 60s when frog was born.

Sam Birger, the founder of Nomenon, a renowned naming firm, whom I met in NY last week, … Read more

Reports examine causes, victims of data breaches

On Wednesday, Verizon Business released a four-year study concluding that 9 out of 10 corporate data breaches could have been prevented, had appropriate security measures been taken. The Verizon report includes the results of more than 500 forensic investigations, including three of the largest data breaches ever reported.

Meanwhile, the Identity Theft Resource Center released its 2007 report on identity theft, offering comparisons to data it's collected over the last five years.

Verizon found that 73 percent of the data breaches were the result of outside sources, with only 18 percent from insider threats. Of the outside sources, 39 … Read more

Chase Visa accounts being hacked?

Am I the only one currently getting hammered for using a Chase Visa card? In the past three weeks, two of my Chase Visa (Marriott Rewards) cards have been compromised, despite the fact that a) my wife and I still have the cards in our possession and b) we don't use the cards on dodgy Internet sites (well, except for Arsenal.com :-).

Am I alone with the problem? It just seems to be too coincidental that both cards have been compromised in the past few weeks, especially since we don't use the two cards with the same … Read more