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Scientists Find RFID 'Fingerprint' That Could Prevent Counterfeiting

Radio frequency identification tags (RFID), which appear in items like credit cards and passports, have long been susceptible to hackers looking to steal personal information. Still, RFID tags are used in many ways -- from tracking a shipment of clothes to automatically opening a doggie door. But a breakthrough from a group of University of Arkansas scientists might just ease the minds of those who worry these devices aren't secure enough. The discovery hasn't much to do with the devices themselves, but the way in which they are read.

According to Physorg.com, Professors Dale R. Thompson and Jai Di discovered that each RFID tag has a "fingerprint." Essentially, each tag has a unique power response at different radio frequencies -- even for tags of the same make and model. With preexisting physical characteristics in mind, scientists can interpret an electronic "fingerprint" to each tag. Using those fingerprints as a key would make the devices harder to hack and counterfeit.

With RFID being used more and more by government agencies and private businesses, it's comforting to know that somebody is thinking about security. Maybe now we can stop wrapping our credit cards in aluminum foil. It's a good thing this news broke before we let paranoia take over. [From: Physorg.com, via Engadget]

Web

FBI Busts Up Worldwide Phishing Ring

FBI Indicts 100 in Identity Theft CaseThe FBI has busted up a major spam and bank fraud ring that spanned from coast to coast, and even had ties to Egypt. Fifty-three suspects in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Charlotte, North Carolina have been indicted, with dozens of them already in police custody. An additional 47 Egyptian suspects have been named, and authorities there are working to apprehend them now.

The scam centered around phishing spam e-mails, in which the crooks posed as representatives from a bank and asked the victims to update their personal information by following a link. If targets followed the link, they were taken to a bogus banking site that harvested their personal and banking account information. The 100 criminals, working in concert, immediately withdrew money from their victims' accounts, transferring their spoils to fraudulent accounts.

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Web

Woman Finds Bank Account Hacked, With $27k Extra

In a strange twist on a now familiar story, an English woman last May found that her bank account had been accessed by criminals and that the money therein had increased. Amanda Fothergill, 40, of Darlington, received a phone call from a stranger who claimed to have deposited a substantial amount of money in her account. Shocked, Fothergill checked her balance only to discover a brand new deposit of £17,200 (around $27,500). The crook, who would call in ensuing weeks as frequently as once a day, tried to convince Fothergill to transfer £14,000 to another account, leaving her with £3,000 for her trouble. For her part, Fothergill wasted no time in notifying both the police and her bank, Abbey. Sadly enough, her prompt honesty was not exactly rewarded.

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Computers, Web

'Chat-in-the-Middle' Phishing Scam Tricks You With Instant Messages

The RSA FraudAction Research Lab has uncovered a sophisticated and tricky new phishing scheme. Dubbed the 'Chat-in-the-Middle' scam, the new attack targets the online customers of a specific U.S. financial institution and begins, as many scams do, as an apparently innocent log-in screen.

The new twist, though, appears after the marks have entered their log-in information. Typically, once phishing victims enter their ID and password, they're redirected to a dummy Web site created by the grifters. The Chat-in-the-Middle scheme, though, incorporates a fake real-time support chat window (even if you don't have an IM service installed), through which the scammers try to dupe their targets into divulging pertinent personal information like names, addresses, and phone numbers.

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Computers

Identity Thief Busted by Facial Recognition Tech

If Indiana police's charges are true, George Helms collected identification cards like baseball cards. When it came to his alleged identity-theft scam, Helms seemed to be a careful man, but he didn't account for a new software program when he walked into the Hobart, Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV).

According to CBS2 Chicago, police arrested Helms, who had filed paperwork and taken a photo for what is alleged to have been his eleventh Indiana license on August 14th. According to the BMV, its facial-recognition software detected similarities between his submitted photo and those of 10 other Indiana licenses, all allegedly belonging to Helms. Police claim that Helms also had 15 IDs from Illinois. He was charged with seven counts of forgery.

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Web

Is Phishing Finally on the Decline?

It's about time. The Associated Press writes today that mercifully, IBM reports that phishing attacks are on the decline.

Phishing, for the uninitiated, has nothing to do with Vermont hippies. Phishing scams are typically comprised of a sketchy e-mail that links the recipient to a malicious Web page (often disguised as the log-in page of a bank or social networking site). There, the duped Web-surfer is asked for personal information -- an e-mail address, password, account number, or goodness knows what else. If you've ever read Switched, you've read plenty about them and have, hopefully, learned how to steer clear of them.

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Computers

Fake ATM Dupes Hackers at Hacker Expo

Don't you love that lovely twist wherein the hunter becomes the hunted?

Such was the case at the recent DefCon hackers' convention in Las Vegas, where a fake ATM was set up in the conference center of the Riviera Hotel Casino in order to steal account information from any gullible hackers who might cross it. Apparently, there were at least a few of them. (As of yet, no reports stating the exact number of victims have emerged.)

It's unclear how long the ATM was there, or whether or not it was an inside job perpetrated by one of the conference attendees. Witnesses told authorities that the machine was placed in such a way as to avoid the gaze of surveillance cameras.

Brian Markus, CEO of Aries Security, first identified the machine as a trap. "In any casino anything that is considered that high value has a camera," Markus told Wired, "and they placed it where there were no [hotel] cameras visibly watching that exact spot where the ATM was."

Shining a flashlight through the machine's smoked glass screen, Markus didn't see the typical camera looking back at him, but instead a PC meant to steal card data.

The best part? The ATM was operating right outside the hotel's security office. Major bonus points for that one. [From: Wired, via Neatorama]

Computers

Network Solutions Loses Nearly 600K Credit Card Numbers

You wouldn't think that a business called A-1 Lock & Key would have too many break-ins. And you might not believe that a store called Jojo's Gun & Pawn would be prone to a rash of stick-ups. But Web broker and online marketing firm Network Solutions recently ran into a great big Network Problem when a hackers' long term infiltration of its servers left 573,928 names, addresses, and credit card information exposed.

Friday, Network Solutions issued a notification to 4,343 of its e-commerce clients (nearly half of its total clientele) stating that nearly 600,000 credit cards belonging to those sites' clients had been compromised between March 12th and June 8th. CNET reports that routine server maintenance uncovered malicious code this June, and Network Solutions promptly hired a computer forensics firm to investigate.

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Computers

Volatile ATM Strikes Back Against Human Operators


South African crooks have recently focused their attention on Absa Bank, one of the African nation's largest financial institutions, by bombing several of the company's ATMs during the last year. In the Western Cape region, a popular tourist destination, authorities also claim to have identified approximately 40 data-stealing card-skimmers at various ATMs.

To protect its machines -- and inflict a little street-corner retribution on the ATM miscreants -- Absa installed cameras and pepper spray canisters on 11 machines in the Cape, according to IOL. If someone attempts to manipulate the card slot, hook up a skimming device, or plant explosives on one of the machines, the camera is designed to detect the activity and deploy a cloud of pepper spray. Recently, the plan was theoretically executed to perfection in the town of Fish Hoek, but the recipients of the pepper spray burst were innocent maintenance workers instead of attempted thieves. The repairmen had to seek immediate medical attention.

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Computers, Web

Vacationers Prime Targets for Cybercriminals

With more and more people using Wi-Fi-enabled devices -- from iPhones to netbooks to standard laptops -- the need for public Internet access is steadily growing. Unfortunately, cybercriminals are very aware of this fact and, according to Fox News, are exploiting it to the best of their ability. By creating phony Wi-Fi networks in places such as hotels and airports, crooks target carefree vacationers who are more more worried about hitting the beach than they are network security. This nonchalance can often find travelers the victims of identity theft.

Wireless security company AirTight Networks conducted a study last year in 27 airports around the world, and the results are borderline horrifying. For instance, the baggage-handling system at JFK International was being run on an insecure network. Other airports' ticketing systems were similarly run on insecure networks. Of the airports that did use encryption, 80-percent of them used the easily cracked WEP standard, as opposed to the more secure WPA and WPA2 protocols. AirTight contacted several airlines regarding the loose security in early 2009, and thankfully, airlines such as American and JetBlue have been swift to remedy the situation.

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Computers, MySpace, Web, Social Networking

Researchers Guess Social Security Numbers With Help of Social Networks

Researchers Guess Social Security Numbers With Help of Social Networks
Here is some terrifying news for those of you who are paranoid about identity theft: Criminals may be able to guess your Social Security Number (SSN) with little more than your birth date and home town.

Researchers at Carnegie-Mellon have found that using only publicly available data, such as that posted to a Facebook profile, they were able to guess the first five digits of a person's SSN on the first try 44 -percent of the time, provided that person was born in 1988 or later. In 8.5 percent of the cases, they were able to successfully guess all nine digits within the first 1,000 attempts.

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Computers, Web

New E-Mail Scheme Hijacks Your Webmail Account

Phishing scams involving hijacked accounts and the dissemination of phony links have recently appeared on Facebook and Twitter, but now that strategy is returning -- albeit in a creepy new way -- to its old stomping grounds: e-mail. A group of Net grifters has been breaking into browser-based e-mail accounts (e.g. Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or AOL Mail), and sending dubious messages to everyone in the account's contact list. According to The Washington Post, the messages typically include a link to an e-commerce site or a message asking that money be wired to a specific location.

The scheme can be particularly effective and dangerous because people typically don't hesitate to open a message from the recognized account of a known friend. The scam can be prevented, though, so it's important to protect your e-mail account information and to always be wary of opening links. If you're going to use a personal account for business or shopping, try to only use your own computer or gadget, as hackers can use keystroke loggers on public devices to steal logins and passwords. It's also important to fortify your e-mail passwords and to definitely change them up if you feel an account may have been compromised. For further in-depth tips on warding off scammers and protecting your personal information, check out our list of 15 Phishing Scams to Watch Out For. [From: The Washington Post]

Web, Social Networking

Facebook Hole Reveals Private Info

Facebook has had its share of privacy and security issues, but a pair of professed Facebook fans at FBHive have recently found an easily exploitable hole that can reveal private information, even if the privacy settings are set to hide it.

Thankfully, the folks at FBHive have not made public the details of the hole, which can allegedly reveal your hometown, relationship status, political views, birthday, and relationships. They did, though, bring it to Facebook's attention on June 7th. Facebook took its time, but rectified the issue today.

Robin Wauters of TechCrunch got the FBHive duo to confirm the exploit by revealing to him personal information which he had elected to keep private on Facebook. FBHive also revealed personal information about tech big-wigs like Kevin Rose (founder of Digg), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO), and Cory Doctorow (editor at BoingBoing).

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Computers

High-Tech Pickpocket Ring Broken Up by FBI

Imagine if the the characters in 'Oliver Twist' had access to the Internet and other high-tech equipment. Fagin's band of orphaned pickpockets wouldn't have stopped at just snatching wallets; they would have used the stolen credit cards to commit fraud, and the driver's licenses to steal identities.

Well, according to FOX News, a Chicago-based group calling itself 'Cannon to the Wiz' has been merging low-tech pickpocketing with the modern scheme of choice -- identity theft. The group, active since 2007, has targeted residents in the Detroit area, where suspected ringleader Leonardo Darnell Zanders is currently being held in prison.

Two separate February raids by postal inspectors and the Secret Service on the respective homes of Zanders and alleged associate Clyde Austin Gray, Jr. turned up IDs, checks, and credit cards stolen from over 100 victims in total. The FBI alleges that the ring stole money and personal documents from victims at Detroit-area sporting events, as well as in Virginia and Washington D.C., highlighting the national nature of the crimes. So far, the FBI has charged ten people in connection with the ring, describing those charges as only the "first" swipe at the group. Wired estimates that Cannon to the Wiz has over 200 members, so we expect to see more charges filed soon. [From: FOX News]

Computers, Web

Court Busts Hacker Over $100,000-Stealing Trojan Horse

A man used hacking software to steal more than $100,000 from banking and brokerage accounts over a six-month period in 2007, according to Macworld. Alexey Mineev recently plead guilty to one count of money laundering in U.S. District Court.

Mineev stole account numbers and passwords from users with a Trojan horse, which can pose as anything from a security patch to a screensaver. Then, he wired the stolen money to accounts in Russia, sometimes moving as much as $10,000 at a time. Security experts told Macworld that it's difficult to recover money once it leaves the U.S. Two other men were charged along with Mineev in the hacking scheme but U.S. authorities cannot touch one of them, because he, like the money, is in Russia.

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