Over in the U.K., John E. Dunn discusses some hefty fines that have been levied following data breaches, but comments: The public gets to hear about the punishment but a lot is left behind a curtain of secrecy. This is wrong and possibly dangerous. What the UK lacks is not punishments but a basic data…
Category: Commentaries and Analyses
Confessions of an ATM Hacker
Tracy Kitten writes: I caught up this week with Barnaby Jack, the so-called ethical hacker who cracked the operating systems of two retail ATMs during last month’s Black Hat Technical Security Conference in Vegas. Jack, who heads research for IOActive Labs, a privately held computer and network security firm in San Francisco, hacked two commonly…
Banks Complicit in Fraud — Is it Systemic?
Naomi Wolf has followed up on her recent column about her experiences with WaMu and fraud by describing her shock at discovering how widespread such problems are and the e-mails she received from readers. Well, I certainly now felt less alone — but far more outraged and alarmed, on behalf of all of us, especially…
New German ID cards easily hacked
The sensitive personal information found on the new German identification cards with data chips scheduled for nationwide introduction this November can be easily hacked, according to testing done by a TV news show. Public broadcaster ARD’s show “Plusminus” teamed up with the hacker organisation the Chaos Computer Club to find out how secure the controversial…
Banks Siding Against the Customer in Fraud Cases
Naomi Wolf recounts the ugly story of her interactions with WaMu when she reported suspected fraud on her account. … I noticed eventually that checkbooks were missing from my home, and finally my accountant got enough of the records to see an unmistakable pattern of fraud, and called my attention to it. I filed a…
Leaks
Ben Zimmer’s On Language column in the New York Times magazine section discusses the use of the word “leak.” Although the context of his column are leaks of a political nature such as the Afghan war files, it struck me as just applicable to data “leaks.” Here’s a snippet of the column: Do we need…