The Windy City, like a lot of other metropolitan areas of late, is facing major budget deficits in the face of the recession’s strong bite. State and local governments alike have been hunting for additional sources of revenue, so it’s not surprising that a Chicago alderman would entertain the possibility of installing red light cameras along the city’s major thoroughfares and intersections.
2008 hasn’t been the best year for CAPTCHA-based anti-spam systems; Google’s Gmail CAPTCHA was broken in February, followed by that of Hotmail in April. Researchers have fought back by incorporating images into CAPTCHAs, but this is only effective against bot-driven CAPTCHA crackers.
About two weeks ago, we covered the release of a DNS security fix meant to patch a vulnerability in the system that matches domain names with IP addresses. The flaw had been discovered by security researcher Dan Kaminsky some months earlier but, at the time, details on the exploit were being kept secret.
Of all the methods scammers use when hunting for victims, phishing is one of the most difficult to guard against. Phishing attacks are designed to exploit societal vulnerabilities more than technical flaws, and, in some cases, are extremely difficult to block. Even the best anti-malware software suite can’t stop an end user from willingly revealing personal information, particularly if the Web site being used to collect the data doesn’t trip any high-alert security alarms.
The Federal Trade Commission has taken an interest in educating consumers on the dangers of phishing. To that end, the government organization has prepared three separate 60-second videos on the ways and scenarios a consumer might possibly encounter a phisher.
Citibank and the nation of Ethiopia narrowly avoided a disaster in 2008 when thieves posing as government officials attempted to illegally transfer $27 million away from the country’s bank accounts. In this case the theft was detected and stopped before money changed hands, but the event is a sobering reminder that citizens in developing countries—Nigeria, in this case—have access to an increasingly sophisticated arsenal with which to launch their schemes.
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