The article dispels one assumption that might commonly be made about such insider fraud...
Am I the only one that is concerned that our financial institutions are assuming things relating to their security policies? Because it's common knowledge in our industry that most security threats come from inside, not outside, the organization.
I kind of doubt that Intel was like "Here's a million dollars, don't worry about signing anything, we trust you."
Funny, it goes on elsewhere. Partnerships with Universities are a common occurrance: They research new innovations for dirt cheap under the condition that Intel be provided with the results of that research so they can develop into a marketable (and patentable) product. It's not necessarily an exclusive contract, either -- exploratory research often comes without strings attached.
It's a completely neutral act not to be trolled into some nonsensical paralell about murder or theft.
The law criminalizes behavior, not intent. Intent is no longer necessary to be convicted in the United States. It's not a troll to point this out, and there was no parallel made to murder, only theft. And it is arguably theft: If someone burglarizes your home, and then another person comes in after and "studies" the scene, it is still unlawful entry. When they "hijacked" the botnet, it moved from unlawful entry to theft of services, because in order to do that they need to send commands to the client on the machine.
While it is valuable knowledge in learning what the state of the art is in botnets, they should restrict themselves to studying machines under their own administrative control and/or machines which they have permission to conduct those activities on.
So what exactly constitutes a "blogger", or a "paid review"? If I post a twitter update, is that a "blog"? What about a note on facebook, is that a blog? What if I don't call it a blog, but call it a public diary instead?
It's taken alot of stuff from Battlestar Galactica and Lost - not nescesarilly a bad thing -
Yeah, they took mostly the bad parts. I had to watch fifteen minutes of some hysterical young woman crying because her dad was a diseased and overweight US senator who decided to throw himself out of an airlock in some misguided sense of justice. Was I the only one who was thinking "if all you have to do is push a button, there's about fifty better ways to do it than this -- like drop one of those floating camera balls on it maybe?" Hey, you're in a ship made by a super-advanced civilization. I'm willing to bet there's a Plan B that doesn't involve dramatic (but stupid) death. Can I have some intelligent death with my drama, pleeeeease? Also, if they wanted to take something from BSG, why not take the idea of a stronger female role model, rather than reverting to the Hysterical Idiot Woman cliche that pervades almost all science fiction?:(
Oh, and could we do a little less wholesale borrowing of the Baltar character in this series? I half-expected this Rush guy to start masturbating to visions of a long-lost love the moment he realized they were running out of air. Also, since this is the 3rd generation of the series -- us long-time Trek fans know where this puts it: Deep Space Nine. Cue groaning in 5...4...3...
'Our own economy has turned out to be less stable than we'd all assumed.'
Well yeah, what do you expect when you hire a bunch of kids and people from India to grind away for hours and then sell it back to you at inflated rates? I mean, you've got a guy who's willing to hire a pile of workers from some foreign country to do all his work while he sits back with his level 80 character and monopolizes all the good stuff for his friends? It's just like outsourcing!
Please read the letter USBIF wrote to Palm -- they *expressly* stated that usage of the VID/PID in this manner is a supported and expected function of the USB standard. They are using their VID/PID exactly in the way it was intended for.
It wasn't before iTunes 8.2.1 was released. First it was allowed, then Apple tied the software to the vendor ID, so Palm responded by saying "Hey, I got a better idea: How about you f--- off?" and emulated the vendor ID. To hell with the USB-IF! I applaud Palm for standing up to this: Technology should interoperate as best as it can with other technology, on the simple basis that it's cheaper to not redesign the wheel -- don't engineer what you can just buy is a mantra in most engineering communities, until you get to IT where this kind of anti-social behavior is encouraged. If they don't want to test everything, then fine! Put it in the fine print. The vendorID can then be used for diagnostic purposes as it should -- "Well, we don't support that configuration. Sorry." There's a big difference between departing from interoperability or not testing it because of expense as opposed to intentionally making something not interoperable.
This is a malaise of our profession and we should support every individual, group, and company that tries to get away from it.
why is Palm insisting on taking this road instead of another?
Because its the only way to break the DRM Apple is using. Its the only way for certain hardware/software combinations to work. If iTunes and other iPod-based accessories and software worked with other hardware IDs, Palm wouln't need to clone the ID. This is no different than how many wifi routers allow MAC Address cloning -- and MACs also have a vendor prefix. Its to bypass restrictions based on assumed-to-be unalterable hardware IDs.
Blame Apple, not Palm -- they are using the hardware ID for a purpose not intended; To lock other vendors out of a market and hamper interoperability.
The sophisticated high tech criminals are not in prison. They're on a beach somewhere enjoying your money.
Jeffrey Skilling was caught. He's still on a beach enjoying your money (hint: Enron). But if your lawyer isn't that good, steal enough money so you can buy yourself a nice prison stay too, like his partner Andrew Fastow.
that one piece of paper gives a thief your name, sometimes your address, bank account # and the ABA routing #. if it's someone working in a mail room they can just copy the address from the envelope if you don't have it on the check. Then they can buy the rest of the info for cheap from some company and they have your entire profile. if you own property then all your info is available via your county courthouse and some company that organizes all this info.
Your name is on your credit card.
Your address is on social networking sites, court documents, resumes, etc. If nothing else, you just need a zip code and a last name and a trip to the post office will get you that information.
Your bank account and ABA routing number accomplish the same thing as your credit card number. Your credit card number also has a checksum -- so it can be validated before trying to use it, unlike an account number.
Seriously, a check is no different from a credit card as far as security is concerned.
They're just looking for their money back from the feds.
I think the fed should hold onto the money; The last thing you do to someone who doesn't know how to budget themselves and blows their money on crap like booze and toys instead of rent and food is give them more money.
Actually, SSNs are assigned sequentially. If you have enough of them (even 10% of the dataset would be enormously useful) and a DOB, you can get pretty close. Plus you can eliminate certain combinations: any field with all zeros, for example, is not used. A useful thing to know if you need to give your SSN out to someone other than an employer, bank, or the IRS -- most systems accept the input (no sanity checks, oops), and you can be sure you're not interfering with somebody else's credit doing so.
The sophisticated ones generally don't get caught, or at least not so quickly.
They usually get caught because they become complacent or greedy. It's a statistics game: And one they will lose because they are human and will make a mistake eventually. Usually, the mistake is because of one of those two reasons.
Despite public perceptions of identity theft being a high-tech, computer driven crime, it is rather mundane and requires few technical skills. Identity thieves do not need to know how to hack into large, secure databases. They can simply dig through garbage or pay insiders for information. No particular group has a monopoly on the skills needed to be a capable identity thief.
No, but that's like saying theft is a mundane crime that requires few technical skills. You'd be right -- the majority of those caught are unsophisticated and generally of low intelligence. The only other common traits is that they're generally desperate and were presented with an opportunity. But if they are organized and sophisticated, like say the mafia, or botnet authors -- those very few people who have refined their skills and moved beyond immediate opportunity and are refining their methodology are capable of far, far, more. And the police are ill-equipped to deal with this sophistication because most people who reach that level of competency have researched police investigation methods -- by trolling the same public records this report did and figured out what the common pitfalls are.
Professional criminals may make up a minority per capita, but their "take" is orders of magnitude higher, and risk exposure orders of magnitude lower.
If you have cable or satellite your old one kept on working with no changes.
Yeah, with about 15 channels that are still standard definition. Want more? Upgrade to digital.
Converter boxes were widely available for antenna users and were even subsidized by the government.
Yeah, and they ran out of coupons and it only covered half the cost of the equipment. Plus, people needed new antennas in many cases -- which cost more money. Why spend $300 in equipment to use a TV that most places charge you to take it for recycling?
California pays more in federal taxes then it received in services every year. According to the Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html, page 5) in 2005 California received $0.78 from the federal government for every dollar paid. In 2005 (the most recent report) they were 43rd among states for money received. Saying they are looking for another handout is a bit of a stretch.
Uhh... what does that have to do with the price in China? They have a $42 billion dollar budget deficit. They need money from anywhere they can get it. Yeah, they're looking for handouts.
Because Windows 7's main competitors - Windows XP and Vista - run on 32 bit. And not even offering your product to half your customers is a great way to ensure half your customers don't buy it.
Curiously, initial reviews say that amongst the general public, most don't have plans to upgrade. Must have something to do with how most people are friggin' poor now and can't afford to drop $700 on a new desktop, LCD, and then $200 or so on licensing a new operating system. Not when we're still getting over sticker shock from having to spend $800 freaking dollars on an 'HDTV' because of the forced and sudden obsolesence of every TV made before it. I'm sorry -- but if you make less than about $35k a year, forget it. Just keep using XP and playing Warcraft 3 with your friends. Who bloody cares anymore about having a gazillion gigabytes of everything and a processor you can fry sausages on? I mean, besides you and me, because we're geeks and attracted like moths to fire when it comes to computer goodies.
Likely true, but if California is able to do this, any state can.
If California was a person, it would be spending twice as much as it makes, smell awful, and have a sense of entitlement that could drop cattle at twenty paces. Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout. Should they get the money, they'll inflate the budget, blame everybody else for cost overruns, drag their heels for years, and it'll wind up costing 3x as much and the General Accounting Office will be admonishing everyone involved. And the "bullet train" won't be able to run more than 35 MPH because it runs within 5 miles of a school zone and they're worried Little Timmy might get run over.
You want to see mass transit that works? Look at Minnesota's Light Rail. It's making money, and they're expanding it with only a minimal outlay of federal funding. The only reason we have to ask for funds at all is because MNDOT up and let a bridge fall into the river.
Do you know why people are moving away from traditional media? Because it acts like it's better than we are. Blogging has become popular because it's there in plain english, the way we look at things -- and it's accessible and free. I can share it with my friends instantly -- unlike a newspaper which is physical and takes time. With the digital age, all of my friends are only a few feet away from me most of the time. Cell phones and laptops are like spiders -- there's always one within a few feet of you.
Traditional media has forgotten that the most important asset they have is trust -- and accessibility. There is still just as much need today to know what's going on in the world now as there was fourty years ago. But most media is awash in a crapflood of advertisements and profit-oriented behavior, which when people see they reflexively numb their senses. Seriously -- hold a normal conversation with someone and in the middle of it toss off a marketing slogan. If they don't strangle you, did you notice they're about half as smart as they were a second ago? They recover, but the momentum in the conversation is now gone. We don't trust traditional media (GenX and GenY) because it's full of crap and irrelevant to our daily lives -- so we blog and we talk to our friends, and they filter stories they find relevant back to us.
I have friends on facebook that post links of personal interest to their feeds so the rest of us can see and comment on it, and this is the foundation of the new media -- peer relationships. Journalism needs to mesh with this, and the journalists themselves need to get out there and put their reputation on the line in a public and accessible way. I want to 'friend' journalists I like and trust on facebook and then see their stories -- separate from these stupid constricting media websites and the constant crap-flood of advertisements that go with them.
Okay, but how do the journalists get paid? I mean, it costs them time to do the job, right? I don't have all the answers there, because it's not my industry, but I know that having a hundred friends that listen to me about anything related to computers is worth something. And a lot of people here on slashdot are in the same boat.
And probably hetero as well. A gay guy hit on me a couple of weeks ago in a redneck bar, and I was there with a woman! What is it about gays and lesbians that make them think everyone is gay?
Look up 'fag hag' sometime.:\ Sorry, I know I shouldn't give hints to the heteros, but if you're truly that offended, you should know...
Slashdot Mirror
This one ought to make everyone say "enough is enough".
As long as the licensing costs are less than the litigation costs, I don't think anyone's going to say that.
The article dispels one assumption that might commonly be made about such insider fraud...
Am I the only one that is concerned that our financial institutions are assuming things relating to their security policies? Because it's common knowledge in our industry that most security threats come from inside, not outside, the organization.
What can I do with this that I can't do with a dozen other dd-wrt routers?
N routers pretty much kill b/g routers within range. You can't do that with an ordinary dd-wrt router.
I kind of doubt that Intel was like "Here's a million dollars, don't worry about signing anything, we trust you."
Funny, it goes on elsewhere. Partnerships with Universities are a common occurrance: They research new innovations for dirt cheap under the condition that Intel be provided with the results of that research so they can develop into a marketable (and patentable) product. It's not necessarily an exclusive contract, either -- exploratory research often comes without strings attached.
It's a completely neutral act not to be trolled into some nonsensical paralell about murder or theft.
The law criminalizes behavior, not intent. Intent is no longer necessary to be convicted in the United States. It's not a troll to point this out, and there was no parallel made to murder, only theft. And it is arguably theft: If someone burglarizes your home, and then another person comes in after and "studies" the scene, it is still unlawful entry. When they "hijacked" the botnet, it moved from unlawful entry to theft of services, because in order to do that they need to send commands to the client on the machine.
While it is valuable knowledge in learning what the state of the art is in botnets, they should restrict themselves to studying machines under their own administrative control and/or machines which they have permission to conduct those activities on.
That definition states you can be fined based on other people's perception of your content. Your intent is irrelevant. What a stupid law...
So what exactly constitutes a "blogger", or a "paid review"? If I post a twitter update, is that a "blog"? What about a note on facebook, is that a blog? What if I don't call it a blog, but call it a public diary instead?
It's taken alot of stuff from Battlestar Galactica and Lost - not nescesarilly a bad thing -
Yeah, they took mostly the bad parts. I had to watch fifteen minutes of some hysterical young woman crying because her dad was a diseased and overweight US senator who decided to throw himself out of an airlock in some misguided sense of justice. Was I the only one who was thinking "if all you have to do is push a button, there's about fifty better ways to do it than this -- like drop one of those floating camera balls on it maybe?" Hey, you're in a ship made by a super-advanced civilization. I'm willing to bet there's a Plan B that doesn't involve dramatic (but stupid) death. Can I have some intelligent death with my drama, pleeeeease? Also, if they wanted to take something from BSG, why not take the idea of a stronger female role model, rather than reverting to the Hysterical Idiot Woman cliche that pervades almost all science fiction? :(
Oh, and could we do a little less wholesale borrowing of the Baltar character in this series? I half-expected this Rush guy to start masturbating to visions of a long-lost love the moment he realized they were running out of air. Also, since this is the 3rd generation of the series -- us long-time Trek fans know where this puts it: Deep Space Nine. Cue groaning in 5...4...3...
'Our own economy has turned out to be less stable than we'd all assumed.'
Well yeah, what do you expect when you hire a bunch of kids and people from India to grind away for hours and then sell it back to you at inflated rates? I mean, you've got a guy who's willing to hire a pile of workers from some foreign country to do all his work while he sits back with his level 80 character and monopolizes all the good stuff for his friends? It's just like outsourcing!
Please read the letter USBIF wrote to Palm -- they *expressly* stated that usage of the VID/PID in this manner is a supported and expected function of the USB standard. They are using their VID/PID exactly in the way it was intended for.
It wasn't before iTunes 8.2.1 was released. First it was allowed, then Apple tied the software to the vendor ID, so Palm responded by saying "Hey, I got a better idea: How about you f--- off?" and emulated the vendor ID. To hell with the USB-IF! I applaud Palm for standing up to this: Technology should interoperate as best as it can with other technology, on the simple basis that it's cheaper to not redesign the wheel -- don't engineer what you can just buy is a mantra in most engineering communities, until you get to IT where this kind of anti-social behavior is encouraged. If they don't want to test everything, then fine! Put it in the fine print. The vendorID can then be used for diagnostic purposes as it should -- "Well, we don't support that configuration. Sorry." There's a big difference between departing from interoperability or not testing it because of expense as opposed to intentionally making something not interoperable.
This is a malaise of our profession and we should support every individual, group, and company that tries to get away from it.
I don't think that the Federal Correctional Institution near Littleton, Colorado has a beach (hint: he is in prison, as is Fastow).
It's a low security-prison located near a golf course and a (achem) beach with a lake. The prisoners are allowed to go there, apparently.
why is Palm insisting on taking this road instead of another?
Because its the only way to break the DRM Apple is using. Its the only way for certain hardware/software combinations to work. If iTunes and other iPod-based accessories and software worked with other hardware IDs, Palm wouln't need to clone the ID. This is no different than how many wifi routers allow MAC Address cloning -- and MACs also have a vendor prefix. Its to bypass restrictions based on assumed-to-be unalterable hardware IDs.
Blame Apple, not Palm -- they are using the hardware ID for a purpose not intended; To lock other vendors out of a market and hamper interoperability.
The sophisticated high tech criminals are not in prison. They're on a beach somewhere enjoying your money.
Jeffrey Skilling was caught. He's still on a beach enjoying your money (hint: Enron). But if your lawyer isn't that good, steal enough money so you can buy yourself a nice prison stay too, like his partner Andrew Fastow.
that one piece of paper gives a thief your name, sometimes your address, bank account # and the ABA routing #. if it's someone working in a mail room they can just copy the address from the envelope if you don't have it on the check. Then they can buy the rest of the info for cheap from some company and they have your entire profile. if you own property then all your info is available via your county courthouse and some company that organizes all this info.
Seriously, a check is no different from a credit card as far as security is concerned.
They're just looking for their money back from the feds.
I think the fed should hold onto the money; The last thing you do to someone who doesn't know how to budget themselves and blows their money on crap like booze and toys instead of rent and food is give them more money.
The hardest part would be SS#
Actually, SSNs are assigned sequentially. If you have enough of them (even 10% of the dataset would be enormously useful) and a DOB, you can get pretty close. Plus you can eliminate certain combinations: any field with all zeros, for example, is not used. A useful thing to know if you need to give your SSN out to someone other than an employer, bank, or the IRS -- most systems accept the input (no sanity checks, oops), and you can be sure you're not interfering with somebody else's credit doing so.
The sophisticated ones generally don't get caught, or at least not so quickly.
They usually get caught because they become complacent or greedy. It's a statistics game: And one they will lose because they are human and will make a mistake eventually. Usually, the mistake is because of one of those two reasons.
Despite public perceptions of identity theft being a high-tech, computer driven crime, it is rather mundane and requires few technical skills. Identity thieves do not need to know how to hack into large, secure databases. They can simply dig through garbage or pay insiders for information. No particular group has a monopoly on the skills needed to be a capable identity thief.
No, but that's like saying theft is a mundane crime that requires few technical skills. You'd be right -- the majority of those caught are unsophisticated and generally of low intelligence. The only other common traits is that they're generally desperate and were presented with an opportunity. But if they are organized and sophisticated, like say the mafia, or botnet authors -- those very few people who have refined their skills and moved beyond immediate opportunity and are refining their methodology are capable of far, far, more. And the police are ill-equipped to deal with this sophistication because most people who reach that level of competency have researched police investigation methods -- by trolling the same public records this report did and figured out what the common pitfalls are.
Professional criminals may make up a minority per capita, but their "take" is orders of magnitude higher, and risk exposure orders of magnitude lower.
... and now it lives on as a ringtone and a diddy we hum whenever something weird happens.
If you have cable or satellite your old one kept on working with no changes.
Yeah, with about 15 channels that are still standard definition. Want more? Upgrade to digital.
Converter boxes were widely available for antenna users and were even subsidized by the government.
Yeah, and they ran out of coupons and it only covered half the cost of the equipment. Plus, people needed new antennas in many cases -- which cost more money. Why spend $300 in equipment to use a TV that most places charge you to take it for recycling?
California pays more in federal taxes then it received in services every year. According to the Tax Foundation (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html, page 5) in 2005 California received $0.78 from the federal government for every dollar paid. In 2005 (the most recent report) they were 43rd among states for money received. Saying they are looking for another handout is a bit of a stretch.
Uhh... what does that have to do with the price in China? They have a $42 billion dollar budget deficit. They need money from anywhere they can get it. Yeah, they're looking for handouts.
Because Windows 7's main competitors - Windows XP and Vista - run on 32 bit. And not even offering your product to half your customers is a great way to ensure half your customers don't buy it.
Curiously, initial reviews say that amongst the general public, most don't have plans to upgrade. Must have something to do with how most people are friggin' poor now and can't afford to drop $700 on a new desktop, LCD, and then $200 or so on licensing a new operating system. Not when we're still getting over sticker shock from having to spend $800 freaking dollars on an 'HDTV' because of the forced and sudden obsolesence of every TV made before it. I'm sorry -- but if you make less than about $35k a year, forget it. Just keep using XP and playing Warcraft 3 with your friends. Who bloody cares anymore about having a gazillion gigabytes of everything and a processor you can fry sausages on? I mean, besides you and me, because we're geeks and attracted like moths to fire when it comes to computer goodies.
Likely true, but if California is able to do this, any state can.
If California was a person, it would be spending twice as much as it makes, smell awful, and have a sense of entitlement that could drop cattle at twenty paces. Don't kid yourself -- they're not looking to build a bullet train, they're looking for another handout. Should they get the money, they'll inflate the budget, blame everybody else for cost overruns, drag their heels for years, and it'll wind up costing 3x as much and the General Accounting Office will be admonishing everyone involved. And the "bullet train" won't be able to run more than 35 MPH because it runs within 5 miles of a school zone and they're worried Little Timmy might get run over.
You want to see mass transit that works? Look at Minnesota's Light Rail. It's making money, and they're expanding it with only a minimal outlay of federal funding. The only reason we have to ask for funds at all is because MNDOT up and let a bridge fall into the river.
Do you know why people are moving away from traditional media? Because it acts like it's better than we are. Blogging has become popular because it's there in plain english, the way we look at things -- and it's accessible and free. I can share it with my friends instantly -- unlike a newspaper which is physical and takes time. With the digital age, all of my friends are only a few feet away from me most of the time. Cell phones and laptops are like spiders -- there's always one within a few feet of you.
Traditional media has forgotten that the most important asset they have is trust -- and accessibility. There is still just as much need today to know what's going on in the world now as there was fourty years ago. But most media is awash in a crapflood of advertisements and profit-oriented behavior, which when people see they reflexively numb their senses. Seriously -- hold a normal conversation with someone and in the middle of it toss off a marketing slogan. If they don't strangle you, did you notice they're about half as smart as they were a second ago? They recover, but the momentum in the conversation is now gone. We don't trust traditional media (GenX and GenY) because it's full of crap and irrelevant to our daily lives -- so we blog and we talk to our friends, and they filter stories they find relevant back to us.
I have friends on facebook that post links of personal interest to their feeds so the rest of us can see and comment on it, and this is the foundation of the new media -- peer relationships. Journalism needs to mesh with this, and the journalists themselves need to get out there and put their reputation on the line in a public and accessible way. I want to 'friend' journalists I like and trust on facebook and then see their stories -- separate from these stupid constricting media websites and the constant crap-flood of advertisements that go with them.
Okay, but how do the journalists get paid? I mean, it costs them time to do the job, right? I don't have all the answers there, because it's not my industry, but I know that having a hundred friends that listen to me about anything related to computers is worth something. And a lot of people here on slashdot are in the same boat.
And probably hetero as well. A gay guy hit on me a couple of weeks ago in a redneck bar, and I was there with a woman! What is it about gays and lesbians that make them think everyone is gay?
Look up 'fag hag' sometime. :\ Sorry, I know I shouldn't give hints to the heteros, but if you're truly that offended, you should know...