The SmartSwipe Online Security, Shopping and Technology Blog

Daryl Silzer, our Vice President of Business Development is celebrating a birthday today. So, we decided to carry out a little SmartSwipe custom and do something horrible to him.

Happy Birthday, Daryl - from the entire SmartSwipe team!

In my last article, I touched on Washington State's Computer Spyware Act. That piece of legislation immediately caught my interest, so I decided to research it further and share the results of my research with all of our readers. Needless to say, I am definitely a fan of this kind of legislation. As I wrote in my last article, "Detailed, on-point legislation like this is a necessary first step for combating cyber-crime. It is a huge step up from the maze of fraud charges and consumer protection statutes that some jurisdictions must navigate to shut down cyber-criminals."

Now that I have had a chance to read the entire act, I think I am even a bigger fan of this piece of legislation. Simply put, it is tough legislation that is built around 21st century crime. And, the more I read it, the more I realize that it is flexible enough to adapt to the next phase of cybercrime.

On October 19, 2009, Symantec released its Report on Rogue Security Software. This report is very short (under 50 pages), yet it is full of extremely useful information on the rise of scareware. As well, Symantec's web site (linked to above) has a huge amount of supplementary information on scareware.

We have been talking about scareware since Daniel McCann's second post on the SmartSwipe blog. So, the facts that scareware is booming and that it is one of the most unethical scams in an internet that is full of scams should not be new.

I was just reading RSA's latest online fraud report yesterday. One very [very] interesting thing in this fraud report and similar ones is that the amount of information in them which cyber-criminals can use for their business development is crazy. Information is the most powerful tool for these criminals. Any tiny bit of information especially the ones you find in these types of reports, help them significantly to plan their future attacks in a way more efficient way. Getting feedback on the success of attacks on different geographical locations, effectiveness of different techniques on different targets, also finding information on strengths and weaknesses of competitors, are what a business development department in a cyber-crime organization would enjoy [a lot]. Sometimes, I wonder how long it takes till we see the first cyber-crime stock market online. Maybe that day we realize how vulnerable our information infrastructure is.

And today is the day...

After years of speculation, Microsoft officially released Windows 7 today. While Microsoft's site is comparatively low key, bloggers have been lighting up the web with their initial impressions and mini-reviews. One particularly funny Windows 7 article comes courtesy of Scott Stein, who wrote about the Windows 7 Whopper on Crave. Get this - in Japan, for a limited time, you can go into a Burger King and order a Windows 7 Whopper. The Windows 7 Whopper has seven patties and is over five inches tall. If I lived in Japan, I could get a new operating system, buy lunch, and qualify for a triple bypass all in the same day.

I have always been a huge Star Wars fan. When I was in kindergarten, I decided that I was going to be a Jedi when I 'grew up'. Quickly realizing that the force was not strong in me, I got quite interested in astronomy and, at one point, badly wanted to become an astronaut.

As I grew, my dreams changed - I got bitten by the writing bug and devoted much of my teens and twenties to learning how to craft words. But, while I never actually pursued my dreams of becoming an astronaut, I still consider myself something of a space nerd. So, I eagerly seek out and digest every bit of astronomy related news that I am lucky enough to hear about.

There seems to be a great divide amongst the general public about the relative safety of online shopping. There is one portion of the public that has become almost blaze about it, they trust the current system and simply couldn’t be bothered with the hype or perceived inconvenience of adding security. On the other side there is a large portion of the public who are so paranoid they refuse to make their first purchase over the internet. In its Fifth Annual UK Online Fraud Report CyberSource found that 41 per cent of people who do not currently shop online cite concerns about the security of online shopping as the reason.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about a bell curve of people with some on each extreme, but this debate seems to be greatly exaggerated at the two extremes with a disproportionate few at the (usually) reasonable middle portion. By middle portion I mean those that enjoy shopping online while taking precautions. I think the main reason most online shoppers implicitly trust the system, and, therefore, put themselves at risk, is because of a lack of education. Ironically it is also lack of education that keeps non-online shoppers from taking the plunge. So is education the answer to the continuing growth of the online channel? Well, not exactly.

Matthew Hines wrote an excellent article last week on how malicious software vendors have 'mastered' search engine optimization to the point that, when breaking news hits, they are able to consistently beat legitimate news sites. The problem is that these malicious sites are getting to the top of Google's rankings, thus turning the search engine and people's natural curiosity about current events into a tool to distribute malicious software.

Hines cited some research conducted by Roger Thompson, who is AVG's Chief Research Officer. Thompson specifically focused on the recent earthquake in Samoa. In doing so, he discovered that 50% of Google's top stories contained some form of malicious threat. Sites that host malicious software even beat out such big names as CNN and the Guardian!