USAToday stories
How Facebook phishers breached a corporate network
March 4, 2010
By Byron Acohido
USA TODAY P. 1A 04Mar2010
SAN FRANCISCO — “Hey Alice, look at the pics I took of us last weekend at the picnic. Bob”
That Facebook message, sent last fall between co-workers at a large U.S. financial firm, rang true enough. Alice had, in fact, attended a picnic with Bob, who mentioned the outing on his Facebook profile page.
So Alice clicked on the accompanying Web link, …More
Google-China affair shows how China does business
January 25, 2010
USA TODAY
25Jan2010
By Byron Acohido, Calum MacLeod and Kathy Chu
Original online posting here.
BEIJING — Zhang Nanting enjoys text messaging acquaintances while he’s at the Golden Fortune Internet café here. Lately, the 28-year-old insurance salesman has been meticulous about keeping his texts squeaky clean.
“I rarely send rude, short messages,” says Zhang, citing the government’s recent crackdown on pornographic texting. “I think it’s excessive management, …More
Finally — a solid measurement of the scale and scope of cyber attacks
September 16, 2009
Metrics precisely quantifying the scale and scope of cybercrime activity have historically been hard to pin down. But now comes a milestone survey, buttressed by another report, that defines the degree to which the Web is infested with malicious code.
The SANS Institute’s report on Top Cyber Risks is by far the most comprehensive accounting of ongoing cyber attacks ever made public. SANS is the well-respected Washington D.C.-based tech security …More
Melissa Hathaway steps down from consideration to be U.S. cyber czar
August 4, 2009
For Melissa Hathaway, the Mission, in the end, did prove to be Impossible.
Hathaway was widely hailed for completing a 60-day review of U.S. cybersecurity policy, setting up President Obama’s milestone May 29th speech, in which he became the first head of state to articulate the necessity for explicit national policies to make the Internet safer.
After her appearance last April as a keynote speaker at the RSA 2009 security conference …More
Insider intrusions escalate using very simple attacks methods
July 29, 2009
USA TODAY
See initial version here.
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY
Marla Suttenberg had a sinking feeling that a corporate spy was shadowing her.
In March 2008, the owner of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based Sapphire Marketing was preparing to give a longtime client a generous price cut on $134,000 worth of audio/videoconferencing equipment.
But before her sales rep could extend the offer, her chief rival, David Goldenberg, then regional vice president of sales for AMX, a …More
Michael Jackson spam spike illustrates botnet infrastructure at work
July 29, 2009
The spike in spam campaigns the began within hours after Michael Jackson’s death hit headlines on June 25th really was not much different than spam waves following the election of President Obama, the outbreak of swine flu and the death of numerous celebrities.
My story delineates how botnet controllers of Waledac, Rustock and Pushdo exectued text book attacks. You can see the story here, or read it below:
USA TODAY
July 29, 2009
Spammers …More
How the proliferation of ’scareware’ fuels cybercrime
June 10, 2009
By Byron Acohido, USA TODAY
Scareware has become the scourge of the Internet.
Find initial version of this article here.
Those deceptive promotions crafted to panic you into spending $30 to $80 for worthless antivirus protection can hit you just about anywhere you turn on the Web. They arrive as booby-trapped Web links in e-mail and social network messages. They lurk hidden, and set to activate, when you click to popular, legitimate websites.
BLOG: …More