One good way to tell if a topic has become mainstream is to monitor USA Today. So I wasn't terribly surprised when I found the lead in the paper's Money section on New Years Day to be focused on the latest trend in cybercrime. It seems that many cybercriminals, frustrated with the countermeasures put in place by larger banks and enterprises are now targeting smaller businesses that have adopted online banking as a way to save both money and and time.

As we all know cybercrooks like to target the weakest link in any system that might yield cash or cash equivalents. In this case, the miscreants have determined that the some of the systems banks use to support smaller businesses have material weaknesses that can be exploited. Specifically, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) systems and wire transfer systems have not kept pace with...

The decline in the newspaper business has already killed some major publications, but for some reason has not (yet) killed off the category of publications known simply as "Advertisers." These are the free publications that typically carry three to four local stories each day, a few dozen syndicated features and lots and lots of ads for local businesses.

We have a couple of these publications in my neighborhood including one entitled the "Daily Post." In a cover story today, they reported that local police stopped a car early Sunday morning and in it found:

"...receipts, unopened mail, doctor's bills and checkbooks belonging to residents in Pleasanton, Menlo Park, Fremont, Atherton, Redwood City and Mountain View."

"If that wasn't enough,...

It's been more than a month since my last posting and it's been surprisingly quiet on the cybercrime front since the Albert Gonzalez plea deal was announced. There have been a few new stories like this one in Network World summarizing how organized crime, mostly Russian, is taking over the global cybercrime industry. Followers of this blog will find nothing new in these stories other than the fact that nearly all major news outlets now seem to view cybercrime as a 'beat' requiring regular reportage.

There were, however, two smaller developments of interest. The first was the discovery that a Russian syndicate had offered a forty three cent "bounty" for every infected Macintosh a user could deliver. It's an interesting case on two fronts. First, it points out...

Doug McLean - Blogmeister

The Washington Post broke an interesting story just before the Independence Day holiday about the issues the National Security Agency (NSA) has encountered in deploying their latest cyberdefense system. The Post requires a log-in to view the story, but the Wall Street Journal also covered the topic in more depth and it’s open to all to read, which I strongly recommend to anyone that cares about cybersecurity.

The basic story runs as follows. The Bush administration chartered the NSA with developing a comprehensive solution to both detect and block cyberattacks aimed at federal networks. The system, named Einstein, was originally deployed in 2002, though the functionality of the system was limited to intrusion detection, no countermeasure...