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Phishers exploit HMRC tax error refund in UK

By admin on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 | No Comments

HMRC logo
Tax authorities in the UK are contacting millions of people, telling them that they have paid the wrong amount of tax.

As the BBC reports, the mistakes in tax payment calculations have been uncovered following the introduction of a new computer system.

So, it’s good news for some (who will be receiving an unexpected windfall in the form of a tax rebate) and bad news for others, who will find that they are being asked to make uncomfortable additional payments to the HMRC.

But if you think you had enough to worry about with the possibility of an unexpected extra tax demand, UK internet users are also at risk as scammers exploit the confusion.

For instance, here’s a message we caught in our spam traps this morning which claimed to come from HMRC with the subject line “You Have… Read the rest

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Arachni – Web Application Vulnerability Scanning Framework

By admin on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 | No Comments

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Arachni – Web Application Vulnerability Scanning Framework

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Why software sales models hurt customers and vendors

By admin on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 | No Comments

At the TechRepublic event in early July 2010, there were a lot of great discussions, and one of the un-conference sessions that tied everything together was “How do we fix the software industry and stop ripping off our customers?”

There are companies that are universally despised by their customers, yet continue to enjoy revenues in the billions by abusing their customer bases. We have entire software classes that cost customers millions to purchase and millions more to install and integrate, but are so useless and difficult to use that only about one third of the sold seats are actually used. There are a number of companies charging so much to support different open source packages that they are actually more expensive than their proprietary competition. We all know who these companies are.

There are a number of ways to make money writing software; unfortunately, many of… Read the rest

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Women did well on Defcon social engineering test

By admin on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 | No Comments

IDG News Service - Of the 135 people Fortune 500 employees targeted by social engineering hackers in a recent contest only five of them refused to give up any corporate information whatsoever. And guess what? All five were women.

That’s one of the interesting data points that contest organizers gathered, following their widely publicized event, held at the Defcon hacking conference last month. Organizers are in Washington this week, briefing the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on what they learned, but they expect to release a report with more details sometime next week.

Contestants targeted 17 major corporations over the course of the two-day event, including Google, Wal-Mart, Symantec, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Pepsi, Ford and Coca-Cola. Sitting in a plexiglass booth, with an audience watching, they called up company employees, trying to get them to give up information.

The contestants were extremely successful,

… Read the rest

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Murdoch Reporters’ Phone Hacking Was Endemic; Victimized Hundreds

By admin on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 | No Comments

A phone hacking scheme involving British royals and reporters working for one of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers went far beyond what was previously disclosed and prosecuted, according to the New York Times.

Andy Coulson, who is currently media advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, is accused of having encouraged the hacking during his tenure as editor of Murdoch’s News of the World paper.

According to the Times, reporters working under Coulson targeted hundreds of victims — from Princes Harry and William to government and police officials and numerous celebrities, including soccer star David Beckham and his wife.

Most of the victims are only now learning that their phone voicemail accounts may have been accessed by reporters, four years after the investigation first launched. One young woman, who had previously been the victim in a high-profile sexual-assault case when she was 19, only recently received a… Read the rest

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