Spy Review

The figures say it all – there has been a 16 percent increase in phishing attacks over last year records show. As criminals get more and more sophisticated, they find it easier to spy on people’s computers and get hold of banking passwords and other details.

And despite all the anti-virus software and despite the fact that people have been warned time and again, they still fall prey to phishing attacks. The fraudsters send emails to customers purportedly from the bank, directing them to a site which looks like a legitimate bank site and asks them to verify their details either for security purposes or because data has been lost or because the bank wants to update its records.

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Body scanners currently in use in many airports, particularly in Britain, have come a under a great deal of flak for various reasons. These scanners offer a complete body scan, more than many people would like. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has said that using these scanners could break the privacy, race relations and discrimination laws in UK.

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The BBC reports that the chip and pin in credit and debit cards may have a serious security flaw. It is no wonder then that though millions of people think they safely use their cards for purchases, they are also at times victims of fraud, even though the cards may not have left their possession. The cards are also used by merchants and banks – in fact everywhere.

A team of computers scientists at Cambridge have discovered a simple method whereby the communication between the pin terminal and the card can be hacked into to garner sufficient information in order to create a cloned card. The person using this cloned card would not even need to know the pin – the system would be ‘tricked’ into assuming that the pin has already been verified.

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News is rife that Google is planning to shut down its China operations primarily because of a ‘highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China’, says the company in its blog.

Google has refused to allow censorship of its internet searches in China, particularly after a cyber attack on the emails of Chinese human rights activists. Reuters’ reports ‘Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to help citizens in other countries, including China, get uncensored access to the Internet, and last week she met top executives from companies including Google, Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), Twitter and Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), an aide said on Tuesday.’

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The terror threat in air is very real as evinced by the recent attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to ignite explosives aboard a Northwest Airlines jet. If he had gone through the full body scanner, the explosives he was carrying would most likely have been detected.

If metal detector and x-ray scanners don’t work, if strip searches are not effective, then perhaps these see-through scanners will ensure a greater degree of safety in the air. However, most people, when asked, said they preferred to be scanned rather than face a terror threat in the air.

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Karstel Nohl, an encryption expert, said at the Chaos Communication Conference of computer hackers that he had deciphered the secret code used to encrypt most mobile calls. He said he wanted to expose the holes in the security systems used by global wireless systems.

The German computer engineer with a doctorate in computer engineering said that the GSM code which has been in use since 1988 is not entirely secure. Earlier in August 2009, at a hackers’ forum, he had appealed to other computer hackers to help him generate the necessary volume of random combinations to crack the code.

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If you are a resident of Britain – beware! Big Brother may be watching you. There are more than 60,000 cameras deployed, operated by local councils. Director of privacy campaign group, Alex Deane, confirmed that a study aptly titled Big Brother is Watching revealed, ‘Local councils across Britain are creating enormous networks of CCTV at great expense, but the evidence for the ability of CCTV to deter or solve crimes is sketchy at best.’

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Many criminals have various tattoos and they keep one step ahead of the law by changing their tattoos, particularly if they have them at very visible places which can be used for identification purposes. Sometimes tattoos are reworked, sometimes they are ‘removed’ in a bid to make identification difficult.

But now scientists and researchers at the University of Derby have figured out ways of using digital cameras with infra-red sensitivity which will enable them to know whether the tattoo is original or has been reworked or erased.

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