BreachBytes

A quote by Gartner analyst John Pescatore in a recent article in PC World points out a fact that is becoming more and more common and is of grave concern to security experts:

“…government-funded cyber espionage is minimal in comparison to that carried out by criminals motivated to steal information for financial gain.”

Cybercrimes are no longer fashionable pranks by teenage hackers to get their name in the paper. Cybercrime is now being driven by financial gain and in many cases is the result of organized crime. The San Jose Mercury News did an excellent three-part series called “Ghosts in the Browser” which highlighted the rise of organized crime, particularly overseas, in the cyberworld.

What makes this so scary?

(more…)

Poor Salesforce.com.

They continue to be under attack by phishing scams. As a customer I have been satisfied with their responsiveness and continue to root for them. My first sighting of the last Salesforce.com attack popped up my ZDNet.com RSS Feed on 11/06/07. The same day I received an email from Salesforce.com explaining what had happened and what they were doing about it. They offered a surprising level of transparency which, in my mind, showed courage and confidence based on their timely disclosure. Over the intervening days changes were implemented that were mildly inconvenient to the user yet improved the security of the Salesforce.com installation (and more importantly our data).

(more…)

Two big legal cases have made headlines in the cybercrime arena over the last week. First, Reuters reported on 1/3/08 that the Justice department has indicted Alan Ralsky, known as the “spam king”, under charges that he orchestrated a stock spamming operation. Reuters, in a 1/8/08 article, is also reporting on a case where a system administrator was hit for $81K in fines and 30 months in prison for unleashing a classic logic bomb on his former employers servers.

Maybe this is just a coincidence but does this signal a shift towards holding criminals accountable for cybercrime? I personally would like to think so since a huge reason that cybercrime is so rampant is due to the U.S. legal system’s inability to evolve and adapt in the prosecution of crimes that take place on or using the Internet.

(more…)