One by one, like toy soldiers under fire, the country’s largest banks are being peppered with distributed denial-of-service attacks, or DDos. In early September, test attacks began on small banks’ sites. Then JPMorgan, Citigroup and Bank of America were assaulted. Most recently Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp and PNC Financial came under the digital hammer. DDoS [...]
My phone rings whenever an IDT911 client is hacked, suffers a data breach, or is a victim of identity theft via digital means. My job as chief information security officer is to look at all the digital evidence. When possible, I reconstruct the cyber attack. It’s C.S.I. work. By reconstructing the attack, often I can [...]
It’s another manic Monday, and you’re racing to drop off the kids, fight traffic, and get to work in time—to watch the Olympics. Americans are putting in time at the office—not to do actual work, but to watch Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings go for gold in beach volleyball. Or the hot, post-Hunger Games [...]
By now you’ve all seen the video of American gymnast Aly Raisman’s parents wincing, twisting and turning in their seats as they watched their daughter compete for Team USA in the Olympics gymnastics competition. (If you’ve been off the grid, check it out here.) We know how they feel, because when we see consumers making [...]
Scammers don’t need to break into your home to steal your personally identifiable information. They have ways of getting you to give it up yourself—through phishing scams. Ondrej Krehel, Identity Theft 911′s chief information security officer, explains how phishing works in this slideshow:
As a security consultant who travels up to 40 weeks a year, T. Robert Wyatt has spent his share of nights in Hilton hotels. In recent years, he has noticed problems with Hilton that extend far beyond unclean rooms or clogged shower drains. According to a lengthy recent blog post, Wyatt says that he has [...]
By Ondrej Krehel, Identity Theft 911 Thanks to modern technology, it’s getting easier to access precious data on databases. The loss of consumer information in high-profile data breaches underscores the need for safe practices. I’ve identified some common unsafe practices that have led to a number of such data loss incidents. Take a look at [...]
By Christopher Maag VeriSign Inc., the company responsible for assuring that more than half the world’s websites are authentic, was hacked multiple times in 2010, and the thieves succeeded in stealing information. The company is one of the major pillars of the Internet, responsible for assuring the authenticity of all websites that end in .com, [...]
by Christopher Maag Maybe you think you can spot scam emails by the broken English, the pleas to wire money via Western Union and the references to Nigerian princes. Think again. The latest phishing attacks are so well-crafted, they look exactly like emails you might receive from major banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of [...]
By Ondrej Krehel, Identity Theft 911 How do most corporate data breaches happen? Lost laptops and USB drives. Now many businesses have some kind of security practice in place for lost corporate computers, whether it’s encrypted drives with remote wipe, or a call lost-and-reporting procedure. But how many have USB drive best practices on the [...]
