Month: August 2014

Privacy Data Punisher

August 3, 2014 — Leave a comment

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Let us not act surprised, shall we? It simply had to happen sooner or later. For what is worth, this bad news for our privacy protection is very likely to have a positive epilogue. How? What happened? Well, after this one there will not be any more excuses. We will never be treated as the collateral damage of security breaches.

The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has ordered that the Think W3 Limited as a distinguished UK online travel service has to pay almost $250,000 for fines. Why? It seems fair for almost one million stolen credit cards related data. Could this one have been prevented?

Honestly, it is hard to say, but there is one thing that puts a blame on this agency. Since they acquired their data system in 2006 they have not bothered, not even once as a matter of fact, to run an appropriate security test. Plenty of time for hackers to prepare accordingly, indeed.

Now, these guys from the travel service have more than 250,000 reasons to thoroughly examine all of their security vulnerabilities. Just imagine for a moment how significant saving could have achieved, if they were to conduct the simplest security test a couple of years ago.

The Malware Human Rights

August 2, 2014 — Leave a comment

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The things are getting serious with hacking, aren’t they? Apparently, so serious that even The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has to intervene. What happened? It seems that the Latvian creator of the Gozi Trojan, which is specially designed to attack banks, thought he will face some unfair treatment by the US Justice Department.

Unlucky for him, in its opinion the ECHR sent a message that Gozi’s father has to answer for his wrongdoings, and that a legal treatment across the ocean will be just fine in this case. This was his last chance to prevent the extradition to the USA, and it has failed.

This obviously talented 29 year old hacker has every right to fight his legal battles. Why? Well, he is facing a 67 years of imprisonment penalty in the USA. You can do the math, can’t you? In other words, this a lifetime sentence. And, the message is strong. Who will dare to attack the US banks after this one?

Maybe, this Latvian hacker can make some kind of a deal with the US government. He can become the US version of Nikita. Why not? In exchange for his freedom he can provide training or even his own personal hacking services to the government. Who knows? He knows too much to work in the prison’s library. Right?