Thursday, February 23, 2006

Botnet Operator "Interview"

Invasion of the Computer Snatchers

Brian Krebs from the Washington Post has posted a great interview with a hacker that operates a botnet and takes a look at the darker sides of the internet.

Steal data, get prison time

Data thief gets eight years

The price for stealing personal data from the Axciom Corp - 8 yrs.

The scary part of the article is that this may not have been the first time it has happened to Axciom.

419 scammers caught

12 Nigerians arrested in Holland for Internet scam

Finally, 12 Nigerian 419 scammers have been arrested in Amsterdam. Supposedly, they have scammed people for over $2.4 million dollars.

What should be done with those dregs of society?

What is the liability of Financial institutions

Strict liability for data breaches?

How much protection must be taken to protect personal data by different types of financial institutions? This is an article about unencrypted data on a stolen laptop from a student loan firm.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail - New York Times

Postage Is Due for Companies Sending E-Mail

AOL and Yahoo apparently are looking to send out their "heavys". These two companies are proposing to have a preferred message system where the sender spends .25 to 1 cent per message to bypass the spam filters of their users. Between this and phone companies like AT&T (formerly SBC) and BellSouth which are looking for multitiered bandwidth solutions both from the end users, but also from the web providers.

All of these models go against the initial concept of the internet and the freedom of information. The internet was created to share information between universities, government entities, and other individuals. Let's hope that people react and let these providers know that this tiering and preferential treatment for those that will pay the "protection" system that this will not be acceptable on the Internet.