Prime Time Crime
Scams & Identity theft
OTTAWA - The Public Safety Department worries Canada is becoming a digital launching pad for - not just a target of - malicious cyber-activities, confidential briefing notes reveal. (CP) MORE: Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security
OTTAWA - Canada's spy agency says the online collective Anonymous isn't just a thorn in the side of the powerful, but the new model for digital hacktivism. (CP) PREVIOUS: Security implications of a shifting news and media environment
WASHINGTON - A hacking collective says it has gained access to an FBI computer and recovered millions of unique identifying codes belonging to users of Apple devices. . (CTV) MORE: FBI tracking Apple users FBI denies leak Smartphones spyware The smartphone who loved me
TORONTO - The app includes interactive features that enable Toronto-area residents to alert police in real time about a crime or potential crime through photos, video, emails, text, and a button that autodials Crime Stoppers. (CP)
Microsoft has filed a patent application for a computer system that will allow advertisers to target customers based on their emotions. (CBC)
Canada has fallen short in protecting its critical infrastructure from a whole host of risks, says a new report published by public policy think-tank Macdonald-Laurier Institute. (QMI) REPORT: Canada's Critical Infrastructure .pdf
SAN FRANCISCO - A Las Vegas man accused of sending more than 27M spam messages to Facebook users faces federal fraud and computer tampering charges. (AP)
OTTAWA - Hackers who attacked two of Canada's federal departments stole classified information before being discovered last January. (CBC) Government's computer system came under attack.
OTTAWA - The RCMP believes fraud in Canada is approaching the size and scope of the drug trade. March is fraud prevention month and the RCMP is taking part in a two-day conference in Ottawa called Preventing Fraud in the Digital Age. (CBC) MORE: RCMP scams and fraud Competition Bureau
LOS ANGELES - Henry Anekwu of Vancouver was also ordered to pay about $500,000 in restitution. (AP) MORE: 9 years for scamming elderly out of homes
ATHENS - Greek police have arrested a 35-year old computer programmer suspected of attempting to sell the 9M files containing identification card data, addresses, tax ID numbers and licence plate numbers. Greece’s population is 11M. (Reuters)
OTTAWA - A 28-year-old man was arrested for allegedly hacking into Quebec’s main government website last spring, and putting it out of commission for more than two days. (CTV)
OTTAWA - Criminals are increasingly using stolen social insurance numbers and doctored birth certificates to obtain legitimate driver's licences and passports, an internal RCMP report says. (CTV)
DUBAI - The ITU has no technical powers to change how the Internet operates or force countries to follow its nonbinding accords. (AP) MORE: Internet regulation WCITleaks
The 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report revealed that more than 46% of Canadians have fallen victim to cybercrime in the past 12 months. (CTV) REPORT: 2012 Norton Cybercrime Report .pdf
LONDON - Anyone using file-sharing service BitTorrent to download the latest film or music release is likely to be monitored, UK-based researchers suggest. (BBC) REPORT: Direct monitoring in BitTorrent .pdf
Earlier this year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the outfit in charge of addresses in cyberspace, allowed applications for new suffixes. (Economist)
TORONTO - Police allege the racket tampered with automated bank machines, using data readers to scan information on the magnetic strip and pin cameras to get personal identification numbers. (QMI) MORE: Global ATM scam 1,500 scammed by ATM
About 200 customers of the Central Maine Power Company recently noticed something odd after the utility installed smart meters in their homes: in some cases other wireless devices stopped working, or behaved erratically. (Security Week)
BERLIN - The Berlin-based Chaos Computer Club (CCC) said it had analyzed a "lawful interception" malware programme called Federal Trojan, used by the German police force. (BBC) MORE: Federal Trojan DigiTask admits sale of spyware Hackers crack government spy software
More than 4M PCs have been enrolled in a botnet security experts say is almost "indestructible". The botnet, known as TDL, targets Windows PCs and is difficult to detect and shut down. (BBC)
EDMONTON - Police say what started as a vehicle stop to check out a stolen licence plate has led to a major bust: they reveal more than 1,000 credit cards, thousands of electronic credit card numbers and equipment used to manufacture counterfeit credit cards were recovered late last month. (CTV) MORE: 4 charged
BARCELONA - The 35 year-old Dutchman accused of masterminding the worryingly vast DDoS attack that nearly swamped anti-spam organization Spamhaus and its partners last month has been arrested in Barcelona. (TechWorld) MORE: Suspicion of launching biggest cyberattack in history Cyber Van DDoS
NEW YORK - The FBI after arresting or charging five key members of the LulzSec hacking group revealed that the head of the group has been working for it since the middle of 2011. (Guardian UK)
Hacked neo-Nazi websites reveal
Stratfor subscriber base posted
Hackivist response to FBI arrests
Anonymous NATO security breach
Hacktivism has gone mainstream
The creators of the Flame malware have sent a "suicide" command that removes it from some infected computers. (BBC)
TOKYO - Japan was likely caught flat-footed by a recent spate of cyber attacks against the heart of its government and defense industry, experts said, warning that the country's credibility and diplomatic relations could suffer unless prompt countermeasures were put in place. (Reuters)
Censorship charges
WASHINGTON - Twitter was facing censorship charges on after announcing it can now block tweets on a country-by-country basis if legally required to do so.
Online behavioural advertising
University of Toronto’s spy-busting Citizen Lab has raised the alarm on a new tool that is used against opposition sympathizers who try to secretly bypass government censorship. (Toronto Star) REPORT: Iranian anti-censorship software has a backdoor
HONG KONG - For years now Chinese authorities have been installing spying devices on all dual-plate Chinese-Hong Kong vehicles, enabling a vast network of eavesdropping across the archipelago. (Epoch Times) RELATED: Canadian software censors the net
Most data breaches are inside jobs
Organized cyber-criminals and malicious insiders were responsible for most corporate data breaches in 2009 according to a new report by Verizon and the Secret Service. (SF Gate) REPORT: 2010 data breach investigations report .pdf
TORONTO - Roger Neiley, 27, faces 60 charges for allegedly selling thousands of dollars worth of non-existent tickets, mostly for Toronto venues, over the Internet. He was sentenced to three months in jail back in 2007 for his role in a similar scheme run by his roommate, Shaun Nixon. (QMI)
SAN FRANCISCO - Dozens of websites have been secretly harvesting lists of places that their users previously visited online, everything from news articles to bank sites to pornography, a team of computer scientists found. (Fox)
"The ZeuS Compromise" may sound like a great movie, but it's actually a newly uncovered, massive hacking network affecting more than 74,000 PCs in 2,400 business and government systems around the world. (Fox) PREVIOUS: Botnet
Sometime in the days leading up to Halloween, the 8,120th Canadian contacted police about being ripped off in a mass marketing scam, surpassing the total number of such victims reported for all of 2009. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, 95% scammed never report it. (CBC)
Computer-security researchers at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands revealed how the smart-card technology, called MIFARE, can be hacked. (CBC) PREVIOUS: Security-chip credit card Smart card Smart card attack Hijacking smart cards
MONTREAL - Express Transaction Services Inc. and some affiliated companies face several charges under the federal Competition Act and Criminal Code, following an investigation and police raids at its Montreal facilities in 2007. (CBC)
US v Mouyal .pdf
CRTC's do-not-call-list enforcement
CRTC urged to stop tele-hackers
Thousands complain about CRTC’s do-not-call
Police bust telemarketing fraud ring
The Reveton Trojan, once downloaded and activated, causes computers to seize and display a fraudulent message purporting to come from the RCMP, CSIS, FBI or some other law-enforcement agency. (CBC)
SAN FRANCISCO - Hackers again targeted the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, which came under fire recently for turning off cellphone and wireless service in a few of its underground downtown San Francisco stations to thwart a potential protest over a police shooting. (CBS)
BART admits halting cell service
OTTAWA - A 56-year-old Ottawa man is facing counterfeit-related charges after sheets with Ontario's holographic design were found at Ottawa's airport. (CP)
A stunning 15 million Canadians were repeatedly targeted by mass-marketing fraudsters in the past year and one million were victims, a major study commissioned by Competition Bureau Canada has found. (Ottawa Citizen)
The e-mail message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane - a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake. Lurking beneath the description of aircraft, engines, and radar equipment was an insidious piece of computer code known as "Poison Ivy" designed to suck sensitive data out of the $4B consulting firm's computer network. (Business Week)
Lost data discs 'endanger protected witnesses'
LONDON - Hundreds of people in police witness protection programmes have been put at risk by the loss of millions of child benefit records. The missing data discs are understood to contain both the real names and the new identities of up to 350 people who have had their identities changed after giving evidence against major criminals. (Telegraph UK) PREVIOUS: Data on 25M lost in post
SEATTLE - On just two groups of servers, in just a few months, federal investigators found more than 200 million spam messages linked to 27-year-old Robert Alan Soloway. (Seattle PI) PREVIOUS: Man's arrest could reduce spam Vancouver man who 'owns the Internet'
WASHINGTON - AOL believes a renegade Internet spammer buried gold and platinum on his parents' property in Massachusetts and wants to bring in bulldozers to search for the treasure and satisfy a $12.8 million judgment it won in federal court. (CBS/AP) PREVIOUS: Return of the 'Kosher Nazi'
PARIS - The Church of Scientology in France has been found guilty of defrauding its followers and its leaders have been handed fines and suspended prison sentences. However, the court did not ban the organization’s activities in France. (AFP)
www.reddotcampaign.ca spells out a simple two-step process to block junk mail
The Bi-national Working Group on Cross-Border Mass Marketing Fraud in its report on Identity Theft identifies the following means of theft:
Physical Methods
Mail Theft
Theft from Residences and Personal Spaces
Electronic Methods
Misuse Of Personal Data in Business Transactions
Phishing, Spoofing and Pretexting
Theft from Company or Government Databases
The report also deals with the scope of Identity Theft:
In the United States, identity theft-related complaints reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) increased from 86,212 in 2001, to 161,836 in 2002, to 214,905 in 2003 -- an increase of nearly 250 percent. In the first two quarters of 2004, the FTC received an additional 130,217 identity theft complaints. This means that the average number of complaints that the FTC received per week has consistently increased: more than 1600 per week in 2001, more than 3100 per week in 2002, more than 4100 per week in 2003 and more than 5000 per week in the first half of 2004.
In Canada, the PhoneBusters National Call Centre received 7629 identity theft complaints in 2002 from Canadians reporting total losses of more than CAN$8.5 million. In 2003, PhoneBusters received 14,526 identity theft-related complaints from Canadians, reflecting reported losses of more than CAN$21.8 million.
Statistics gathered by PhoneBusters in 2003 and the first half of 2004 indicate the largest number of complaints surrounding identity theft relate to credit cards or false application for a credit card (32 percent) and cell phones or false application for a cell phone (10-12 percent). Similarly, the FTC reports that in 2003, 33 percent of identity theft victims reported that their identifying information was used for credit card fraud and 16 percent of victims reported that their identifying information was used for fraud in ordering phone service. Cell phones accounted for 10.4 percent of this total while landline phones accounted for 5.6 percent. Due to challenges categorizing the statistical information, law enforcement in both countries has reason to believe that actual instances, particularly of credit card "takeover", may actually be much higher.
More Information on Identity Theft
The Canadian Identity Theft Support Centre, funded by the feds and private partners, has been set up to help victims dealing with the fallout of identity theft. (QMI)
Government of Canada: Identity Theft
Ottawa missed chance to deport
Data theft worse than first reported
New scam uses counterfeit checks
BC a global centre for fake ID
Thieves after more than credit card
How credit-card data went out door
ChoicePoint previous identity theft
Bank of America Security Lapse
California sets fines for spyware
The makers of computer programs that secretly spy on what people do with their home PCs could face hefty fines in California. From 1 January, a new law is being introduced to protect computer users from software known as spyware. (BBC)
If you have not installed Spybot or AdAware think about doing so. It’s free. – Chris
Anti-spam plan overwhelms sites
Spoofing' a growing fraud problem
'Sasser' teen released other worms
Teen 'confesses' to Sasser worm
Warning on hard drives' security
Online job scammers steal millions
For a more complete list
For a more complete description of scam letters: