03.22.06

The True Nature of Cyber Crime

Posted in security, privacy, fraud, hacking at 5:44 pm by HowardG

Cyber-attacks, hacks, and acts of online vandalism perpetrated by loners in attempts to direct attention to themselves were at one time the biggest threat companies had to worry about. For those individuals, breaking into a company’s network produced no direct gain. Instead, they did it for the glory of becoming a cyberspace anti-hero, or at least to relieve the boredom of their humdrum lives. But today, those misguided fools are the least of a company’s network security worries. Malicious attacks are increasingly being carried out for very specific reasons. Cyber criminals are using bot-nets, denial-of-service extortion attacks, and sophisticated identity theft techniques for financial gain. Read the rest of this entry »

03.01.06

Tax Season Scammers Go Phishing

Posted in security, privacy, fraud at 11:27 am by HowardG

The Internal Revenue Service released what it calls its “Dirty Dozen” list of tax scams for 2006 this month (http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article). The scams range from tax filers making frivolous claims that income tax is illegal, to misuse of trusts and offshore transactions. While most of the top twelve involve fraud perpetrated by taxpayers, number three on the list is phishing, a scam whereby an identity thief attempts to take advantage of an innocent taxpayer and obtain personal financial data.

According to the IRS, criminals using phishing attacks sometimes pose as IRS representatives to gain the trust of an individual taxpayer. Typically, the scam revolves around a fictitious e-mail correspondence sent out, which appears to be from the IRS. Read the rest of this entry »