just watched 4 corners

i suggest anyone who has ever shopped online watch tonites episode

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1435556.htm


actually, anyone oneline should watch it

Four Corners

Broadcast: 17/08/2005

"Bad guys are winning the war. There’s no question bad guys are winning the war..." - data security consultant Alan Paller.

It’s a global war being fought by governments, police, spies and the titans of banking. The enemy is everywhere in cyberspace.

If you hold a credit card, or use the Internet for financial transactions, you are a potential victim. At stake is not only your money, but your identity.

In Australia, credit card fraud and identity theft cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Internationally, some estimates put the cost of cyber-related identity theft at more than $200 billion – bigger than the entire cocaine market.

Recently about 130,000 Australians became casualties of a massive theft of data that compromised the details of up to 40 million people worldwide. Cyber criminals hacked into a US-based credit card processing company, CardSystem Solutions, which processed transactions for Visa and Mastercard. This crime was first detected not in America but in the backrooms of the National Australia Bank’s Melbourne fraud unit.

High tech variations on old con tricks abound. One of the biggest is “phishing”. It’s the email offering you something or, worse, pretending to be from a reliable source like your bank or insurance company. The email directs you to a website that looks genuine and invites you to submit further personal details. Some of these phishing web pages are so sophisticated that they sit like parasites on the real websites of reputable companies and institutions.

Such techniques are not solely for greedy but peaceful hackers. Four Corners examines the potential for terrorists to accumulate funds through cyber-theft. One of the convicted Bali bombers has already written a how-to guide for young jihadists.

Can cyber-theft be countered? Experts who police the net are pessimistic, not least because so much personal data now exists in insecure data banks around the world. Recently the Sun newspaper in the UK exposed a data-selling racket by employees of Indian call centres that service large global companies.

Now Four Corners has obtained evidence that individual Australians’ private data is for sale on the international market to anyone who is willing to pay for it.

If, like many Australians, you’re in the habit of giving out information to perfect strangers, this report will make you think again.

doh, the repeat is on Wednesday night while I'm at the NIN concert, can someone record it and make a torrent ;)

yeh someone record it

i do ALOT of shopping online

doh, the repeat is on Wednesday night while I'm at the NIN concert, can someone record it and make a torrent ;)

I'll give it a burl and record it from the ABC-2 channel since I have digital access to it, way cool!

I notice that quote has little to say about offline credit card fraud. Offline versus online usage of a credit card has the same risk. Wanna be safe? Put all your cash in your mattress and don't smoke in bed.

i click on links in emails all the time. and attachments too. people r so nice to me they send me happybirthday.exe's when its not my birthday hehehe. :-)

Although i do like 4 corners, that kind of a story reminds me to much about biast today night and a current affair stories. I wish they would present both sides of the argument. Like. Were having problems BUT! were trying to stop them.

wish they would present both sides of the argument

Ummm what other side of the argument ? how they're bonking hoes with your phat loot ? "If you hold a credit card, or use the Internet for financial transactions, you are a potential victim". That's the message. Unless you wanna hear bulls*** to make you feel like you're safe then by all means.

oh god. how could this happen? i thought the internet was safe from danger and crime, just like the real world!

I'm in charge of our credit card billing system at work and recently we had to look at the Payment Client Industry Data Security Standard being introduced by MasterCard and Visa. Basically it's a huge knee-jerk reaction by MC/Visa to make it look like they're concerned about preventing further data theft.

Thankfully we aren't big enough to have to do the third-party security audit they require, which must be done by companies approved by MC/Visa (It'd be nice to have shares in some of those companies cos they'd be laughing right now with all these clients being forced to use them).

We did do the self-assessment questionnaire and it was the biggest piece of s*** I've ever seen. Seriously, if you can't pass the questionnaire then you simply wouldn't have stayed in business long enough to put much cardholder data at risk cos your servers would get pwned quick smart. Most of it was common sense stuff:

Q1.1 Are all router, switches, wireless access points, and firewall configurations secured and do they conform to documented security standards?

No, we like leaving our entire network open so we can get raped 24/7.

We've had security audits done in the past at work because from a business standpoint it is worthwhile - if our servers get compromised we won't make money. So it would have been a waste of our time and money for MC/Visa to make us go through another just cos of the data compromise at CardSystems Solutions last year. As it was it wasted a couple of days of my time having to read over all this s*** just to confirm that we do indeed have the common sense required when it comes to internet security.

last edited by cerb at 07:47:38 16/Aug/05

Yeah it's scary very scary. I agree with the point raised - the weakest point of all security is human. In those call centres, you can encrypt the data all you want but all it takes is for someone with 1) Enough motivation 2) Paper & Pencil/Pen to jot down your details 3) Smuggle it out 4) Sell it, and there goes your privacy.

did this .torrent eventuate?

did this .torrent eventuate?

Dunno HeardY but why don't your send me your ccard and other personal details so I can check if your details have been sold?

is bk actually bk? or did someone hax0r his account? I'd never known him to be so hilarious...