Ontario Teachers Affected by Data Breach
Who Breached: Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan Number Affected: 8,600 Information breached: Social Insurance Numbers How: laptops stolen On December 3rd, laptops containing the private information (names, address, social insurance numbers) of about 8.600 Ontario teachers was stolen from the Waterloo offices of the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan. Those affected were notified of the breach in mid-January.
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Ontario Teachers Affected by Data Breach
Five Computrace equipped laptops were stolen from an office burglary in late 2009, though with a little help from the Absolute Theft Recovery Team, police recovered four soon after. These recoveries pointed directly to a suspect, resulted in an arrest, and conveniently, an informant. Police were tipped off to a second suspect, who Absolute was able to confirm as the unauthorized user of the fifth machine
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Absolute Recovers Laptop…And Then Some
Mashable put together a popular article recently entitled “3 Ways Educators Are Embracing Social Technology”. The article talks about the challenges teachers face with budgets and small class sizes alongside changing technologies. The article also talks about how these new technologies are being embraced to fight back against the onslaught of problems.
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Educators Embrace Social Media
Twitter has decided that certain passwords are so bad that they cannot be used to log on to the popular site. It’s interesting since the list is concise and contains both the predictable and obscene, but it’s the mundane words (including one of my own favorite passwords) that are so intriguing. When I first heard about this list, I was initially irritated by Twitter’s attempt to assert control over what users choose as their passwords but, after reading through the 370 banned terms, I realize that this list could (and possibly should) be used by everyone when choosing a password for any site. Some examples include banana, twitter, cookie, 111111, monkey and zzzzzz.
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370 Passwords Banned by Twitter
Today we made the big announcement at CES in Las Vegas that LoJack for Laptops is bringing the Intel® Anti-Theft Technology (Intel® AT) remote locking and messaging capabilities to consumers – the first computer theft recovery, data protection and IT asset management solution to do so! What this means: you will now have a combined solution for theft recovery, remote data delete and *NEW* remote lock down and message display capabilities!! Prior to an Intel AT enabled computer going missing, a LoJack for Laptops customer can set the frequency with which a computer must check in with Absolute monitoring servers before Intel AT automatically locks it.
As we head into a new decade, we all have the opportunity to take stock of where we are and where we want to go. Of course, aside from personal goals, we can also consider this a great time to take stock of the security issues in our lives too – both in personal and business settings. So, what are your goals for 2010?
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What Are Your 2010 Security Resolutions?
Sephen Watt, the 25-year-old man who has admitted to providing the “sniffer” program used to hijack the credit card numbers associated with the TJX breach , has been sentenced to 2 years in prison and 3 years of supervised release. In addition, he will have to pay over $170 million in restitution.
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TJX Sniffer Creator Sentenced
Absolute’s recoveries often lead police to more than just stolen computers…check out a few of this week’s top recoveries: –> A laptop disappeared from the locked desk of a corporate customer, leading police to believe that the thief was internal to the victim company. Indeed, the unauthorized user that Absolute identified was a current employee, and also discovered, was a longtime suspect for past office thefts – but the company simply did not have the intel to prove it. Now armed with the information provided by Absolute, police were able to attend the employee’s residence
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Absolute’s Top Recoveries of the Week
Absolute recently recovered a customer’s laptop after it was stolen from a Massachusetts dorm room. The story unfolded as follows: a few weeks prior to theft, the identified suspect’s own laptop had been stolen on the same campus. Laptopless and doubtful of its return (her machine was not equipped with Computrace LoJack for Laptops), the suspect decided to find a quick replacement – and an unlocked dorm room provided the perfect opportunity for some late night laptop larceny.
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Student Pays Laptop Theft Forward
Last week, Eric Schmidt, who is the CEO at Google, made some comments that raised more than a few eyebrows. During a recent interview with CNBC, Schmidt was asked whether it is a good idea for users to share their information with Google. His response was: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” While I can appreciate his intention, it is a pretty risky thing to say when you are the CEO of a search engine. His comments seem particularly unreasonable when you consider how upset Schmidt was when CNET reporters found out about his salary, donations and other personal information and included their findings in a published article. In response to this, Schmidt blacklisted the reporters from Google. The ironic thing is that they obtained all of their information by searching Google.
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Does Google Care About Your Privacy?
Whenever a new version of Windows comes out, I usually avoid buying from that first batch, since there always seems to be glitches to work out. It appears that Windows 7 is no exception since it was shown to be vulnerable to 8 of the 10 “freshest” viruses circulating around the internet. SophosLabs used a copy of Windows 7 on a clean machine that was configured to follow system defaults without loading any anti-virus software. Of the 10 viruses that they introduced to the machine, 2 would not operate correctly under the newest version of Windows
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8 reasons why you should use anti-virus software with Windows 7
Cell phones are used for a lot more than making calls these days. We listen to music, keep track of our schedules and, of course, surf the internet using mobile browsers. Naturally, criminals see this as an opportunity to tap into our personal information. An article published by CBC demonstrated how risky it can be to hand out our cell phone numbers without considering the ramifications. Cell phone numbers are being used as identification on some websites and, in some circumstances, is almost as good as a credit card. Canadians are reporting that they’ve been tricked into signing up for high-priced text message services that cost as much as $5 per text simply by entering the phone number when using games and quizzes
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Cell Phone Numbers Can Be Used By Thieves
It’s almost unbelievable but hackers have found a way to steal personal information through electrical outlets. It sounds implausible to many but, unfortunately, the threat is actually real. I read an article about how hackers have found a way to “steal information typed on a computer keyboard using nothing more than the power outlet to which the computer is connected.” How is that possible? Typing on a regular keyboard sends an electrical signal through the unshielded cable to the computer which then leaks the information into the ground wire on the computer’s power supply. All a thief has to do is set up in a nearby location and use a power socket in order to detect and grab the information in the ground leakage. This is possible up to 15 meters away.
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Hackers Stealing Through Electrical Outlets
There’s a very tried-and-true saying in the security world: “Security through obscurity is not security.” It is extremely common for users of technology to assume that “the bad guys” will not know how to break in, steal, hack, alter, or achieve whatever damage is in question. A similar belief is that “they wouldn’t be interested in my data.” People very, very commonly believe that they have “nothing of interest to a thief” on their hard drives.
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Tip of the Week: Security Through Obscurity is Not Security
It seems like it’s getting harder and harder for spam filters to differentiate between true spam and regular emails. There are times when legitimate emails get flagged while malicious content slips through the cracks. As such, consumers might need to adopt some habits to ensure that they can spot scams without relying on their filters. Switched.com created a list of 10 Ways to Spot an E-mail Scam and I thought it would be good to discuss some of their suggestions ( click here to read their whole article). The site also has an article about the top email scams which, although things are always evolving, is definitely worth reading. The first and most important warning sign is the request for personal information. If someone is asking for your log-in or bank account number, it’s probably not safe to reply. I have never had a legitimate business ask me for important information through email so make sure you verify the source of the email before you reply.
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Tips for Spotting Email Scams
PC World recently wrote a story about Wi-Fi cable modem routers and how a security hole left thousands of Time Warner customers vulnerable to hackers. Incredibly, the company isn’t responsible for uncovering the problem. A customer needed help with his Wi-Fi network and asked a friend for help with the configuration. His friend, David Chen who writes the Chenosaurus blog, was surprised to discover the issue and wrote: “from within your own network, an intruder can eavesdrop on sensitive data being sent over the Internet and even worse, they can manipulate the DNS address to point trusted sites to malicious servers to perform man-in-the-middle attacks. Someone skilled enough can possibly even modify and install a new firmware onto the router, which can then automatically scan and infect other routers automatically.” That’s a very scary thought! Most subscribers trust the equipment installed by their service providers and would never imagine that a router they have been given could leave them open to attack. Time Warner has implemented a temporary patch but prior to Chen’s discovery, administrative access to the routers was allowed and attackers were free to run programs against them
Addition of Encryption Functionalities Renders MyLaptopGPS’ Product an All-in-One, One-of-a-Kind Approach to Laptop Computer Security: “Encrypt. Track
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Laptop Computer Security Firm Launches MyLaptopGPS Encryption and Remote Decryption Kill to Provide the Industry-Leading Laptop Protection Technology
Who Breached: Network Solutions Number Affected: 500,000+ Information breached: Credit card information How: hacked As the result of a hacker penetrating their e-commerce system, Network Solutions has determined that approximately 573,938 credit card holders may have had their data transfered. The company detected that hackers had placed unauthorized code on servers for some e-commerce merchants’ websites, and that this code may have been used to transfer data on some transactions
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Network Solutions Breach Is Handled Well
Sophos has released its mid-year Security Threat Report for 2009, which looks at cybercrime for the first half of this year. The report indicates that cybercriminals have increased the focus of their attacks on social networking sites and that hackers are increasingly using scare tactics to solicit users to pay for rogue anti-virus software.
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Cybercrime on Social Networking Sites Up in 2009
According to the Cisco 2009 Midyear Security Report , internet criminals are becoming more sophisticated , using increasingly targeted attacks. However, Cisco predicts that increased collaboration between organizations, like what we saw with Conficker, and new security policies may make it more difficult for attacks to infiltrate and spread. The Midyear Security Report provides an overview of Cisco security intelligence, including information about new threats and trends, for the first half of 2009.
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Cybercrimes More Sophisticated, But So Too Are Countermeasures