Daily Report Monday, November 6, 2006

Daily Highlights


The Seattle Times reports Starbucks said on Friday, November 3, that personal data on 60,000
present and former employees and contractors was on two laptop computers missing from its
Seattle headquarters. (See item 8)

The FBI has arrested more than a dozen people in the U.S. and other countries in an
international identity theft operation −− called Operation Cardkeeper −− that involves the
trading of social security numbers, the sale of stolen credit card account information, and
phishing. (See item 10)

Information Technology and Telecommunications Sector

35. November 03, IDG News Service — Security threat changing, says Symantec CEO. The
threat posed to computer users and companies by hackers is shifting from attacks on the computers to attacks on electronic transactions, according to the head of one of the world's largest security software vendors. John Thompson, chairman and CEO of Symantec, said the change has been taking place over the last few years but has recently been accelerating. "The attacks that we see today are more targeted and more silent and their objective is to create true financial harm as opposed to visibility for the attackers," he said. The head of Symantec's Asia Pacific business, Bill Robbins, explained in an interview that this changing threat would mean businesses will have to spend more time and energy on making sure that data is not just secure but also recording which users are accessing and manipulating information stored in corporate databases.
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/11/03/HNchangingsecurity threat_1.html

36. November 03, IDG News Service — FTC settles with adware company. Adware distributor Zango will give up $3 million in "ill−gotten gains" for deceptive downloads that displayed billions of unwanted pop−up ads in a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The settlement, announced Friday, November 3, bars Zango from loading software onto consumers' computers without their consent, the FTC said. The settlement also requires Zango, formerly known as 180solutions, to provide a way for consumers to remove the adware. FTC settlement: http://www.ftc.gov/os/caselist/0523130/0523130agree061103.pd f
Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/11/03/HNftcadware_1.html

37. November 03, VNUNet — Hackers use Wikipedia to spread malware. Hackers are using online encyclopedia Wikipedia to spread malware, according to a security firm. Sophos discovered that hackers had created an article on the German edition of Wikipedia containing false information about a new version of the Blaster worm, along with a link to a fix. However, the fix is actually a piece of malicious code designed to infect visitors' PCs. Wikipedia is built from user contributions, allowing anyone to create or edit the content of a page. The hackers sent spam messages to German computer users, which purported to come from Wikipedia, and directed recipients to the fraudulent information. As the e−mails linked to a legitimate Website, they were able to bypass some anti−spam solutions.
Source: http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2167949/hackers−wikipedia− dupe−users