Unemployed IT Worker Of The Month

"A Frenchman who broke into Barack Obama and Britney Spears' Twitter feeds insisted Thursday he is no hacker but a `kind pirate` seeking to expose security weaknesses.

"`I did not act with a destructive aim ... I wanted to warn them, to show up the faults in the system,` said the 23-year-old, who was arrested Tuesday after an operation by French police and FBI agents.

"The curly-haired unemployed computer technician wore a pair of slippers adorned with smiley faces as he sat in his parents' home in central France and told of how he broke into the popular micro-blogging site.

"Francois C., who spoke to AFP on condition that his full surname not be used, is accused of breaking into Twitter and Google accounts, including ones used by US president Obama and pop star Spears..."

Full article at EXPATICA.com...

Gartner: Newbz To Write 25% Of Business Apps

"By 2014, citizen developers will build at least 25 percent of new business applications, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that this advance should both enable end users and free up IT resources. However, analysts warned that IT organizations that fail to capitalize on the opportunities that citizen development presents will find themselves unable to respond to rapidly changing market forces and customer preferences.

"Gartner defines a citizen developer as a user operating outside of the scope of enterprise IT and its governance who creates new business applications for consumption by others either from scratch or by composition.

"`Future citizen-developed applications will leverage IT investments below the surface, allowing IT to focus on deeper architectural concerns, while end users focus on wiring together services into business processes and workflows,` said Eric Knipp, senior research analyst at Gartner. `Furthermore, citizen development introduces the opportunity for end users to address projects that IT has never had time to get to — a vast expanse of departmental and situational projects that have lain beneath the surface.`"

From Businesswire...

Report: "Complacent Consumers" Responsible For Rise In Cybercrime

New Low In Blaming The Victim

"UK cybercrime has rebounded to worrying levels, not seen since 2006, as a result of the recession and consumer complacency, according to Garlik's annual UK Cybercrime report.

"The report, which analyses publicly available data to build a comprehensive view of cybercrime in the UK, revealed that during 2008 cybercriminals adapted to the social and economic changes in the UK to exploit victims in new ways and commit over 3.6 million criminal acts online (that’s over one every 10 seconds). In addition, the researchers believe that there is a growing complacency amongst consumers demonstrating poor understanding of their responsibility to protect their personal information against fraud.

"One of the most significant changes in cybercrime has been the 207% increase in account takeover[1] fraud indicating that criminals have now shifted their efforts from opening new accounts with stolen identities to accessing existing accounts. Savvy criminals have got round the drying up of available credit in the current economic climate to maintain their illegal activities.

"`We fear that account takeover fraud will continue to increase in 2009 due to the decline of available credit and tighter credit checking by the banks,` commented Tom Ilube, CEO, Garlik. `Consumers must be extra vigilant of all their online and financial accounts as well as avoiding increasingly convincing phishing scams.`"

More...

Anonymous Bloggers At Risk

"The Internet has become a great soapbox for ordinary citizens, but there is increasing controversy around the trend of anonymous political blogging. In 2006, it was estimated that 55 percent of American bloggers post under a pseudonym. But along with the explosion of anonymous blogs has come a whole host of problems. Some bloggers have used their anonymity to spread false information without ramifications. Others have used it to launch personal attacks against friend and foe alike.

"This has led to appeals from all over the political spectrum for regulation. Some blogging platform providers such as Tumblr are taking action on their own and shutting down anonymous blogs. The European Union entertained a proposal last fall to prohibit anonymous blogs. In the U.S., some have asked that the FCC categorize anonymous political blogs under campaign finance laws subject to regulation...

More at The American Spectator...

Hackers Pig Out On Swine Flu Concerns

"Computer scammers are feeding off swine flu fears to entice people to download viruses or purchase bogus products.

"Emails titled `Are you worried about flu outbreak?` and `Global panic as swine flu spreads to Europe` are luring people into clicking on links or opening attachments that could be malicious, computer security company PC Tools said.

"PC Tools spokeswoman Magida Ezzat said cyber criminals were also using the celebrity angle, with email titles such as `Swine flu in Hollywood` and `Madonna caught swine flu`.

"`Hackers will play on any big event or celebrities and we've recently seen a lot of scams around the financial crisis as well as the inauguration of Barack Obama,` she said.

"The spam emails usually contain a link to a malicious website or what appears to be a PDF file, but is in fact a program that tries to steal user names and passwords."

From news.com.au...

Dr. Dobbs on Security Best Practices

"As of 2009 the value of information is approaching the value of gold, platinum, oil and other expensive commodities. In fact as the global recession expands, the value of information is rising faster than the value of natural products such as metals or oil. As the value of information goes up, it is attracting more sophisticated kinds of thievery. In the past hacking and viruses were often individual efforts, sometimes carried out by students and even by high-school students sometimes just for the thrill of accomplishing the act.

"However in today's world theft of valuable information has migrated to organized crime, terrorist groups, and even to hostile foreign governments. Not only that but denial of service attacks and `search bots` that can take over computers are powerful and sophisticated enough to shut down corporate data centers and interfere with government operations. This situation is going to get worse as the global economy declines..."

Excellent article at ddj.com...

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

Jobless techies turning to crime

"Impoverished techies and IT workers who have been made redundant will go rogue in 2009, selling corporate data and using crimeware, reports predict.

"The credit crunch will drive IT workers to increasingly use their skills to steal credit card data using phishing attacks and to abuse their privileged corporate computer access to sell off valuable financial and intellectual information, forensic experts have warned.

"Both PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and security vendor Finjan are forecasting that the recession will fuel a significant rise in insider fraud and cyber crime in 2009."

More at silicon.com...