cybercrime - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Phishing attack starts with a 'cold call'

  NetSafe warns New Zealand businesses to take preventative measures against sophisticated phishing after the local branch of an international retailer became the target of such attacks.

• Rogue hardware used in attempted cyberheist at Santander bank branch

  A criminal gang attempted to plant a rogue hardware device on the network of a Santander bank branch in London to remotely control a computer and steal money.

• Two sentenced to prison for point-of-sale credit card theft

  Two Romanian men were sentenced Wednesday to serve prison sentences for remotely hacking into hundreds of U.S. merchants' computers and stealing payment card data, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

• French prosecutor starts preliminary inquiry into Prism privacy violations

  Allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency spied on French citizens with its Prism program have prompted the French public prosecutor to begin a preliminary inquiry, a court spokeswoman said Thursday.

• US man pleads guilty to hacking Department of Energy, other sites

  A Pennsylvania man who was allegedly a member of the computer hacking group the Underground Intelligence Agency has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and two counts of computer intrusion, the U.S. Department of Justice announced.

• Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years for classified document leaks

  A military court judge has sentenced U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison on Wednesday on charges related to his leaking a large store of classified documents to Wikileaks, according to a number of published and broadcast reports.

• Larry Ellison: Some government surveillance is 'essential' to fight terror

  Some level of government surveillance is "essential" if the nation is to minimize the incidence of terrorist strikes like the Boston Marathon bombing, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

• 'Western Express' credit-card fraud prosecution ends

  The last member of a $US5 million global credit-card fraud ring was sentenced on Thursday in New York state court, ending an eight-year investigation and prosecution.
  

• IT security vendors seen as clueless on industrial control systems

  Even the most innocuous security processes used for traditional IT systems could spell disaster in an ICS

• What cybercriminals do with your personal data

  When Zappos notified its customers that their names, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers and the last four digits of their credit card numbers may have been exposed during a data breach earlier this month, the online shoe retailer emphasized that "critical credit card and other payment data was NOT affected or accessed."

• Microsoft ratchets up pressure on Rustock operators

  Microsoft continued to put pressure on the operators behind the <a href="http://www.csoonline.com/article/681040/after-rustock-botnet-rebuilding-underway">Rustock botnet</a>, offering a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or group behind the spamming network.

• FBI: 'Anonymous' arrests tied to PayPal DDoS attacks

  The FBI has arrested a total of 14 individuals thought to belong to the Anonymous hacking group for their alleged participation in a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against PayPal last year.

• 10 IT-related predictions for 2011

  We were wrong -- so far -- that Carol Bartz would be ousted as Yahoo CEO by the end of this year, but we were right that Apple's tablet, whose name wasn't known at the end of last year, would be huge. OK, so that second one was probably a given, but not all of our 2010 predictions were so easy. We think the same is true with our 2011 predictions.

• BNZ card technology reduces fraud

  The Bank of New Zealand says its Liquid Encryption Number (LEN) technology for preventing credit card fraud has been a success since it was first trialled on a limited basis in 2008, with the rate of fraudulent transactions from cloned credit cards in New Zealand down by 50 per cent. It is now in place in all BNZ credit and debit cards.
  The technology works by changing numbers on cards&#8217; magnetic strips every time a transaction takes place, or an account balance is requested at an ATM.

• Creaming from the top

  Business fraud committed by middle and senior management across New Zealand has increased by almost 20 percent over the past year, according to the latest PricewaterhouseCoopers Global Economic Crime Survey.
  This shift is a cause for concern as senior staff have the ability to override internal controls and can potentially cause greater financial loss to organisations,&#8221; says Eric Lucas, PwC Forensic Services partner, in a press statement.