Entries by Robert Siciliano

Couple Poses As City Inspectors To Rob Homes

NECN reports “a husband and wife from North Carolina are in court in Massachusetts charged with scamming their way into homes. Police say the couple stole from a house by posing as electrical inspectors. The 75-year-old homeowner says he and his wife were distracted by a woman while man ransacked their home. It turned out…

Elderly Scams Heating Up

Unfortunately the media is reporting lots and lots of scams directed towards the elder population. We’ve discussed these scams at length in these posts, and we are going to again today. As long as there are victims, we need to be reminded of how to protect those who need protecting. Real time – real life…

Facebook Used To Stop Home Invasion

This is just the greatest story about social media used for doing good EVER. A University of Georgia student was in bed when masked men invaded his home and tied up his 17-year-old sister and his grandmother. The student wakes up and probably heard yelling and realized what was happening; apparently he didn’t have his…

The Rise of Smartphones

More consumers than ever before are buying smartphones. A smartphone is an Internet-enabled mobile phone with the ability to purchase and run applications. Smartphones are generally equipped with voice, data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS functions. Operating systems include Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and Windows’ Mobile 7. Most function on a 3G wireless connection and can…

“Digital Goods” Fraud is Big

The Wall Street Journal reports that digital items within games and social networks accounted for $2.2 billion in sales in 2009, and are expected to account for $6 billion in sales by 2013. Billions more are spent on music and other downloadable digital media. “Digital goods” are any products that are stored, delivered, and consumed…

Epsilon Breach Reminds of Security Awareness

Epsilon is a marketing company that has millions of emails on file of consumers who have made purchases or are affiliated with various banks, retailers, hotels etc. Epsilon sends over 40 billion emails out a year and was recently breached in a hack attack. Consumers are now receiving breach notifications from the likes of financial…

Study Shows Single Software Security Incidents Costs Average $300,000

A recent study of more than 150 organizations conducted by Aberdeen Group(1) found that the average total cost to remediate a single application security incident is approximately $300,000. As security incidents can happen at any point in the application life cycle, modernization initiatives can prove especially costly if they are not proactively secured from development…

Twitter Scam Hooks Thousands

Twitter’s numbers are astounding. In the physical world, when communities become larger and more densely populated, crime rises. The same applies to online communities. CNET broke down Twitter’s recent blog post, which celebrates their significant numbers: “It took three years, two months, and one day for Twitter to hit 1 billion tweets; now, a billion tweets are posted…

Epsilon Breach Will Impact Consumers for Years

This week consumers are receiving messages from trusted companies such as 1-800-Flowers, Chase, Hilton HHonors and others, letting them know that their e-mail addresses have been exposed due to the recent Epsilon data breach.  This provides a perfect opportunity for cybercriminals, who may try to take advantage of the breach to send out phishing e-mails…

Home Invader Gets Life

The trial and sentencing of a New Hampshire home invasion that goes back to 2009 where a gang of late teens and 20 somethings broke into a home while the mom and daughter were sleeping is over. The dad was away on business. In the course of events, the mom died of a machete wound…