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Because of metadata, a criminal can find the location of a person who has posted photos on a social media platform or other website from a camera-enabled mobile phone at any time, Bourbon County Emergency Manager Keith Jeffers said.
Metadata are bits of information embedded in images taken with smartphones, webcams and some digital cameras and then shared on public websites. Information often includes the times, dates and geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) where images are taken. Details such as where a person lives and works and their travel patterns and habits can unwittingly be revealed through metadata.
While the geospatial data can be helpful in a myriad of web applications that plot image locations, it also opens a door for criminals, including burglars, stalkers and predators. It's not a stretch to imagine young teens' images of their ventures to the mall or beach being culled by web predators and meticulously plotted on online maps.
People who want to use information to their advantage only need to enter the latitude and longitude coordinates into a program such as Google Earth to find someone's location.
LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes has arrested a man allegedly involved in making and using counterfeit credit cards by hacking card holders’ data. The investigators suspect involvement of some NADARA officials in the crime.
An FIA official told The Express Tribune that the accused, Tanveer Iqbal, obtained computerised national identity cards (CNICs) data possibly with help from some Nadra officials, to produce fake credit cards in his name and names of his accomplices. The official said that the criminals used CNICs that were returned to Nadra for correction of spellings, date of birth and address.
The gang members hacked credit cards using data on the CNICs and used them for larger transactions. He said the gang members had a digital device through which they transferred their data on blank credit cards.
The gang used magnetic strip read and writing (MSRW) machine to rewrite data on credit cards.
A resident of Kanpur landed in hot water after being caught in a police net after he hacked the email address of another person and changed the account details in order to get funds transferred into his account.
The accused identified as 27- year-old Ravi Shukla was arrested by the Cyber Crime Wing of Punjab State Crime Branch, Mohali. He has been booked under various sections of the Information Technology Act, cheating, fraud and forgery on the complaint of Raman Banotra, a resident of Amritsar.
The accused works in a Cyber Café in Kanpur. He was working on online web promotion activity. Earlier too, Shukla had hacked websites and e-mails of business establishments.
The e-mail ID contained various useful and significant data about the company. After hacking the e-mail ID, the accused also changed the profile and managed to get payment in his own bank account. A team of Cyber Crime officials investigated the matter.
Allegations against the accused were proved on the basis of analysis of e-mail particulars and the same were authenticated by Internet Protocol details. Investigations revealed that the motive behind the act was cheating, fraud and monetary gain.
Malware targeting devices running on this OS jumped 37 per cent since last quarter.
Mobile security threats have become a reality. Malware growth for 2011 is set to exceed last year's, with the Android operating system emerging as the main target.
Malware targeted at Android-based devices jumped 37 per cent since last quarter. This puts 2011 on track to become the busiest year in mobile and general malware history, according to a McAfee report. All new mobile malware in Q3 was targeted at Android. Experts feel 2012 will be no different.
TOP 5 MOBILE THREATS FOR 2012
· On the enterprise side, allowing devices without proper security into the corporate network
· Android malware posing as genuine application for stealing information from users
· SMS phishing is a concern and will continue
· Mobile commerce frauds to prevail
· Mobile banking, which is slowly gaining pace, might turn out to be risky for users
The study revealed that there is a significant typosquatting ecosystem around high-profile, often-typed domain names.
A huge 86 per cent of the possible one letter misspellings of the Apple homepage led to typosquatting sites.
The highest proportion of the squatting sites - 15 pc - led to advertising sites. Cybercriminals will register misspelled sites to make advertising revenue every time someone mistypes the name of a popular site. 12 pc were found to be IT & hosting pages - suggesting that they have been registered with the intention of being held onto and sold at a profit, which is also known as 'domain parking'.
It's so easy to mistype a URL, and it's inevitable that from time to time you will end up on an unintended website. In the worst cases, careless typing can lead you to a criminal website designed to steal your identity or phish your credentials
New Delhi: Social networking sites such as Facebook have emerged as the new "honey trap" set by enemy spies prompting the government to ask senior officials of paramilitary and armed forces to stop flaunting their career information or at best stay away from such web sites.
Cases of such cyber espionage have come to light where officials of paramilitary forces posted in sensitive areas were found chatting with spies from across the border or foreign agents who were posing as women on the Internet.
In view of this, several meetings were held to ensure that official computers are not used by enemy spies to woo officials into their fold through the social networking sites and the personnel were sensitised about the new tactics.
No one was willing to come on record or give any data about the paramilitary personnel involved in these kind of cyber espionage cases, but the sources in Telecom Department privy to the developments said an effective mechanism was being put in place to keep a vigil on officials posted in sensitive areas.
In some of the cases, officials were also indulging in video chat with objectionable activities that was recorded by the spies of other countries and used for blackmailing later to gain strategic or commercial information, the sources said, adding, the officials were immediately removed from these areas and departmental action was initiated.
Some of the officials were seen posing with AK-47 and in uniform and in a few cases, they were seen posing with their service revolvers. On being questioned, they only said the motive was to impress people especially girls.
While the number of such incidents was more in paramilitary forces, few were also reported in the armed forces as well.
The Home ministry has already asked officials to stay away from social networking sites such as Facebook on their official computers.
There are underworld dons of the dreaded kind, and then there are the faux kind! A former employee of a tech company headed by a high-profile Bangalore technocrat thought he could frighten his ex-boss into parting with Rs 10 lakh by pretending to be fugitive gangster Chhota Rajan. But his threats turned out to be no more than that, as the police traced him to a house in West Bengal and nabbed him.
There are underworld dons of the dreaded kind, and then there are the faux kind! A former employee of a tech company headed by a high-profile Bangalore technocrat thought he could frighten his ex-boss into parting with Rs 10 lakh by pretending to be fugitive gangster Chhota Rajan. But his threats turned out to be no more than that, as the police traced him to a house in West Bengal and nabbed him.
HYDERABAD: Gone are the days of password hacking and morphed pictures of stars. Guess what’s keeping the cyber police busy these days? It is the fake profiles created by people and the content posted by them on social networking sites. No wonder, US President Barack Obama himself has barred his two daughters from accessing Facebook.
The problem of online stalking and defamation is on the rise in the twin cities. A case in point is that of K Deepak, a techie, who was arrested by the cyber crime police on Saturday for creating profiles in his fiancee’s name on Facebook and Google+ and posting pictures of her, alone and with him. And just two days prior to this incident, another city chap, G Krishna, who is pursuing his B.Tech from Chennai, was arrested for creating a fake Facebook account of an MBBS student and posting objectionable content on it.
Youngsters use Facebook as a medium for posting these pictures. They opt for Facebook, as it is very quick and convenient and fake profiles can be created in a jiffy.
Motives behind such behaviour range from past grudges, insecurity and obsession to rejection and in some cases, even fun. And when it comes to the consequences, the ultimate sufferer is the girl in a majority of cases. With youngsters going on a dating-spree in the city, break-ups are becoming common for a number of reasons. Couples click pictures of themselves to cherish their private moments, but once their bond starts weakening, these pictures become weapons of blackmailing. This is what happened in the cases of both Deepak and Krishna.
Besides working professionals, college students awaiting to to start their careers also hoped for liberal IT policies from prospective employers. Cisco, which surveyed 1,400 college students, found 60% of them in India expected flexible and open-minded IT regulations that allowed them to stay connected to their work and and personal lives at the same time. A mere 17% said that they would abide by the policies issued by employers.
Senior BJP leader and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha has become the latest victim of harassment on cyberspace as it has turned out that he has been receiving hate mail from the last two months.
Police sources said Mr Sinha, who represents the Hazari Bagh constituency in Lok Sabha, has been receiving hate mail filled with communal references and personal abuses from one Ravinder Singh. The investigators have not been able to verify the antecedents of Singh so far but a case was registered at the economic offences wing of Delhi police under Information Technology Act on Thursday.
A complaint sent to Delhi police commissioner B.K. Gupta by Mr Sinha states that he has been receiving hate mails from Singh for two months and had even written to him to desist from the act. “Ravinder Singh has been sending me hate emails for some time now. My email address is widely known and taking advantage of that, this person has of late been sending me abusive mails,” Mr Sinha told the police.
“I once replied to him and requested him not to send me further emails. However, my request has fallen on deaf ears and he continues to send me mails,” Mr Sinha stated. Sources said two mails sent by Singh to Mr Sinha on November 7 and November 30 are full of abuses, targeting Mr Sinha on the basis of his association with Bharatiya Janata Party and on the basis of his religion. “The recent mails contain some references which are communal in nature following which Mr Sinha thought it was necessary that legal action be taken against the accused,” a crime branch source said.
Last month, senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley had approached the crime branch with a complaint against an unidentified person who had been spreading defamatory information on the social networking site Twitter against him through his fake profile.
Cyber crooks will target small businesses, social media attacks will be more common, and mobile security threats will reach an all-time high in 2012.
So says The Cyber Security and Information Assurance Division of Kroll Inc., which released its annual security forecast, highlighting key areas of risk and trends that will impact how organizations and governments combat and respond to cyber threats.
The events of 2011 suggest that the cyber security landscape will find public and private organizations are still on unsteady footing. Traditional pain points for organizations including mobile technologies, incident response and regulatory requirements will intensify as new and developing challenges surface in 2012.