Blog Entries

Dynamic SSL is at RSA!

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 06:00:00 +0100

I have some exciting news - NetSecure Technologies has a booth at RSA 2010 in San Francisco. So, if you are in San Francisco and plan on attending RSA, drop by booth 236 and say hello to our crew there.

To celebrate RSA, we launched http://www.dynamic-ssl.com. Most of the content on this new site is already on smartswipe.ca, but it is nice having our own place online.

Have a great day, enjoy RSA and let us know what you think of our new site.

Phonebusters: 2009 in Identity Theft

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 06:00:00 +0100

Phonebusters published some interesting information on their web site and I thought that I should share it with all of you. They released their statistics for December 2009 and those stats include a snapshot of the year in identity theft. Those statistics seem to indicate that fewer people fell victim to identity theft, but the average loss was much greater.

In 2008, 11,511 reported being the victims of identity theft. These people were victimized out of a total of $9,697,199.05. [...]

How to Properly Swipe Your Credit Card Part 2: Advanced Techniques Part 1

sgross@netsecuretechnologies.com — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:00:00 +0100

It is time to take our swiping discussion to the next level. I wrote part 1 way back in July of 2009 – please refer to it for basic swiping techniques and safety. I am going to break up part 2 into 2 parts. Part one of part 2 will cover more elementary advanced techniques, while part 2 of part 2 will cover middle, advanced-advanced and trick techniques. Then second half of part 2 of part 2, the advanced-advanced techniques, I will begin part 1 of my own past professional exploits. This will [...]

SmartSwipe Version 1.7.3 is Available

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0100

I have some great news from world swipe quarters - SmartSwipe version 1.7.3 is now available for download! This version is a major step forward in the history of SmartSwipe and we encourage all of our users to upgrade. To upgrade, you can either use the pop-up that appears in your version of Internet Explorer, or you can go to our downloads page to download the full version.

Happy holidays!

Happy Holidays from SmartSwipe

sgross@netsecuretechnologies.com — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0100

From all of us here on the SmartSwipe team, have a safe and happy holiday season!

Is Your Operating System 32-bits or 64-bits?

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Between a bad case of writers' block and an extremely busy work schedule, I have not updated this blog in a very long time. However, I was digging around in Google Analytics, noticed an interesting trend and thought I would write about it on this blog.

It seems that a number of people reach our site when they are trying to figure out whether they have a 32-bit operating system or a 64-bit operating system. When I dig around online, I find a series of often confusing instructions. S [...]

Another H1N1 Scam is Circulating

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0100

While I have been following online scams for quite awhile, every once in a while, I read about one
that makes my blood boil. Yesterday, I heard about a phishing scam that made me pretty angry
and today, I got enough confirmation to write an article about it.

There is a phishing email going around right now that says that people who were vaccinated
against H1N1 have to go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) web site to
create a "Personal H1N1 Vaccination [...]

Cyber Monday 2009 was a Success

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Coremetrics, the web site sales tracking firm, announced some exciting numbers from Cyber Monday 2009. According to their numbers, consumers bought 30% more items on Cyber Monday 2009 than on Cyber Monday 2008! Moreover, total sales were up 13.7% when compared to 2008.

These are some incredibly encouraging numbers from the world of online retailing. However, not all of Coremetrics numbers were quite so good. One particularly important metric (shopping cart conversions) was 3.11% l [...]

Googa please!

nsharifimehr@smartswipe.ca — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Once upon a time, there existed this little lovely town called Cybera. People in Cybera were using open source systems happily while having trust in those systems as they could see all what is happening to their precious data. But one day, the big ugly Googa monster came into Cybera with a very very open source platform called ComatOSe. Cybera's wise guys sat together and went through the ComatOSe source code. Here is what they found there:

Into the wild

nsharifimehr@smartswipe.ca — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Yep! It seems like I am going to kick it for a bit without my pseudo-identity. Into the wild! Now, the only thing I need to do is to find a magic bus. Chris McCandless chose to gave them all up, but I did not have a choice. So, here I roll pseudo-identity-less!

Play a Game, Erase your Files

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Internet security news can often be rather bleak and depressing, but every once in awhile, you come across a truly funny news article. CNet came out with an article a couple of days ago that made me laugh/shake my head and I would like to share it with all of you.

A Masters of Fine Arts student named Zach Gage came up with an interesting idea for his thesis. So, he programmed a game that runs on MacIntosh computers. Resembling Space Invaders (Space Invaders gave an entire generatio [...]

Phonebusters Releases Its October Numbers

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Those of you who follow this spot know that I am a big fan of Phonebusters and that I like to re-print and promote their statistics on identity theft in Canada. Further, you may have noticed a rather troubling trend - identity theft seems to be on the rise.

With that trend in mind, I was especially happy to see Phonebusters' October numbers. In October 2009, only 295 people called Phonebusters and reported being a victim of identity theft! These people were defrauded out of a total [...]

Happy Birthday Daryl

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

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!

Washington State's Computer Spyware Act

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

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 [...]

Symantec Report on Rogue Security Software/Scareware

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

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 unethi [...]

Cybercrime business development

nsharifimehr@smartswipe.ca — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

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 suc [...]

Windows 7 Has Been Officially Released

ghluska@netsecuretechnologies.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0100

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 s [...]