CategoryCrime
Last Year Saw the Worst Telecom Hack in Our Nation’s History
While millions of Americans’ metadata were compromised, the specific targets seem to be important political figures and people of interest to the Chinese government
“Personhood Credentials”: The Next Big Thing in online security?
“I’m a human” credentials, intended to combat fraud, would likely start out voluntary but then, by degrees, become mandatoryRather than simplifying our lives, the internet has made our lives more complicated, what with having to continually change passwords, the use of multiple security levels, the threat of hacking, and the like. Now, with the threat of AI creating fraudulent content, some technologists are proposing “personhood credentials” to thwart incursions and impersonations. From the MIT Technology Review story: Personhood credentials work by doing two things AI systems still cannot do: bypassing state-of-the-art cryptographic systems, and passing as a person in the offline, real world. To request credentials, a human would have to physically go to one of a number of issuers, which could be a government or other kind of trusted organization, where they would be asked to provide evidence that they’re Read More ›
Yes, the Billion-Records Data Breach Is Real
My family and I were victims. Here’s how to find out if you are too and what you can do about it
Identity Theft: You’d Be Amazed At What You Did Last Night Online
All the more so if you didn't do it — that is, if your identity was stolen online
Interpol Crackdown: Have You Been Scammed on Social Media Too?
Some details of the law enforcement release hint at the intimate reach of international online crime as well as its broad scope
Free Will: Never Let Mere Atoms Near a Keyboard
No free will — and therefore no responsibility — may sound more “cool” than free will but we had better be careful about what we admire
Why Are Some Retail Stores Ditching Self-Checkout?
Rising theft rates are a key motivator but other problems have arisen, like preventing alcohol sales to minors
Musk vs Australia: Down Under Is Down One For Now
A federal court has refused to extend the demand that Musk’s X platform remove videos showing the stabbing attack on Rev. Mar Mari Emmanuel
We’re Slowly Learning About China’s Extensive Hacking Network
China’s state-backed hackers have embedded malware within U.S. programs used to manage clean drinking water, the power grid, and air traffic, among others
How One Woman’s Campaign Nearly Destroyed Pornhub
In 2020 it was the 10th most visited website on the internet, now just a shell of its former days
If Information Is Wealth, Are Deepfakes a Form of Counterfeiting?
The current tech media overdose on panic over deepfakes. They could be drowning out practical ways of fighting back
Will Deepfakes Be Used to “Show” Us That Computers Can Now Think?
As the deepfake technology advances, William Dembski wonders whether some AI zealots might try to “fake it till they make it,” Theranos-style
Organ Transplants: How the Internet Enables the Dark Side
Euthanasia activists offer to "ease" the donor organ shortage, and so do cartels that exploit the world’s most vulnerable poor
Twitter’s Censorship — Child Porn (Shrug… ), MDs’ Doubts: NO!
Twitter censored doctors and researchers who raised doubts about COVID strategies but seemed helpless about child pornEarlier this week, we looked at The Verge’s groundbreaking coverage of Twitter’s inability to prioritize and address child porn (and non-consensual nudity) at the site. One of the authors, Casey Newton, followed up Wednesday at Platformer,, filling readers in on new facts that he and Zoe Schiffer learned from a former Twitter employee after their story was published. One was that “Twitter’s move would draw Apple’s attention to the significant amount of porn on the service, and potentially place new restrictions on its iOS app or even remove it from the App Store.” That’s no idle threat, Newton reminds us. In 2018, Tumblr was dropped from the Apple app store when “child sexual abuse material (CSAM) was found on the Read More ›
Swatting Goes Into Politics — as Congresswoman Greene Discovered
Swatting — calling the police and pretending that a violent incident is taking place at a given address — can kill the victimThis has been a summer to remember for U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). She was “swatted” twice. The first false report that brought the police to her home was Wednesday, August 23: According to the first Rome PD report, five officers responded to a call on Wednesday during the initial attempted swatting. The caller claimed that a man had been “shot five times in a bathtub” at Greene’s home, and there was a woman and possibly children still in potential danger. On the way to Greene’s house, police realized who the homeowner was, but “due to the nature of the call,” police “formed up” at a nearby intersection and made a “tactical approach.” Rome PD provided Ars with no Read More ›
What To Do If Your Business Is Hit With a Ransomware Demand
A roundup of advice for small businesses and their employees and contract workers, on site or remoteRansomware attacks have reportedly continued to grow in 2022, as criminals hone their skills in grabbing our data and wanting money to release it. Today, it’s not just government and large businesses that are at risk. Small to mid-size businesses are at greatest risk. That’s because a) they often don’t have enough security in place and b) let’s face it, today’s attacker might be content with $300,000 each from a cluster of them rather than $30 million from a giant firm. Attracts less attention, for one thing. Here’s Blackfog’s monthly list of publicly reported attacks in 2022. In the first 30 minutes… Don’t just panic and agree to pay: [Kevin] Epstein says international law enforcement and white hat hackers usually Read More ›
Deep Web? Dark Web? What’s Dangerous? What’s to Know?
The Deep Web hosts information like bank statements and health records so a search on your name won't turn them upThe terms deep and dark sound glamorous and forbidding, maybe criminal. Both terms just mean that we can’t reach a site on that portion of the web via a conventional search engine. The Surface Web, the part that we can reach via a conventional search engine like Google, DuckDuckGo, or Brave, is estimated roughly to be 0.03% of the internet (Britannica). The Deep Web contains email accounts, bank statements, health records, and other services that can only be accessed by passwords. It’s the main reason that our private business can’t be accessed just by searching on our names. Both the Surface Web and the Deep Web are growing as more people go online. Now, about the Dark Web: By comparison, Read More ›
Largest Data Grab Ever Stole Shanghai’s Mass State Surveillance
The police, dutiful in monitoring everyone, flunked data security. Now it’s all for sale on the Dark WebBeijing wants to create a centralized database with personal information on everyone living in China. To do that, the government saves massive amounts of data acquired through surveillance technologies such facial and voice recognition and cell phone monitoring. In a previous article, we saw that the Chinese government’s surveillance network is much more extensive than once thought. However, while the Chinese government has prioritized collecting massive amounts of data, it has not prioritized protecting it. Thus, a hacker has acquired police data files on 1 billion Chinese residents (approximately 23 terabytes of data) from the Shanghai National Police database. The files include name, national ID number, cell phone number, birthdate, birthplace, ethnicity, education level, marital status, and delivery records. They Read More ›
Could the Self-Checkout Ruin Your Reputation?
As Big Retail’s war on shoplifting goes digital, honest customers risk getting nabbed for goofs — and then facing a shakedownIn 2018, it was noted at The Atlantic that shoplifting via self-serve checkouts was common. How does it work? Self-checkout theft has become so widespread that a whole lingo has sprung up to describe its tactics. Ringing up a T-bone ($13.99/lb) with a code for a cheap ($0.49/lb) variety of produce is “the banana trick.” If a can of Illy espresso leaves the conveyor belt without being scanned, that’s called “the pass around.” “The switcheroo” is more labor-intensive: Peel the sticker off something inexpensive and place it over the bar code of something pricey. Just make sure both items are about the same weight, to avoid triggering that pesky “unexpected item” alert in the bagging area. Rene Chun, “The Banana Read More ›