Items tagged with Cyber crime
As Target, Home Depot, and JP Morgan Chase have recently discovered, cyber attacks are tough to fend off, and extremely costly. Enter Tom Ridge, the former Secretary of Homeland Security, with a new insurance product aimed at businesses worried about the financial devastation a successful hacker can wreak. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge Ridge Insurance is offering cyber crime insurance policies of $50 million to small and medium-sized businesses. A typical policy may cover both the financial damage done (like damage caused by the hit to a company’s reputation) and the expense involved in cleaning up the mess from a cyber attack, like alerting customers. Ridge Insurance...
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It doesn't carry quite the same weight as the Warren Commission report and it might even contain more redactions than the Nixon tape transcripts, but recently-released FBI documents obtained by Wired News via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) prove that the FBI has been using its own version of spyware for years to catch cyber-criminals. The spyware goes by the moniker, "Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier" (CIPAV), and has apparently has been in use by the FBI since at least 2004. CIPAV first came to public attention in 2007 when it was mentioned in an FBI affidavit that Wired News had obtained. The affidavit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington,...
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What do providing secret service protection for former vice presidents and going after cyber criminals have in common? (And no, Al Gore did not have his identity stolen--at least not as far as we know). They are both part of the same bill that was just passed by the Senate. Current legislation lacks the necessary breadth to go after and punish how cyber criminals do their dirty work these days. A cyber-crime bill, the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, was introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) last October and it was unanimously passed by the Senate in November. However, it "has been stalled in the House [of Representatives ]" ever since. So as politicians...
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