I awoke this morning at 4:00 AM feeling pretty good! I hope you are having a great day too!
Before I embark upon the slow computer series of articles, I thought I’d clear out the list of updated information that I needed to post.
InfoWorld published the update in their article here:
Update: Tennessee man indicted for hacking Palin’s e-mail account
It appears the 20 year old young man, David C. Kernel, is the son of Mike Kernell, a Democratic state representative from Memphis. He has entered a plea of “not guilty.”
The interesting point of this article however, is how Kernel gained access to Palin’s account.
As I’ve repeatedly shown my students and mentioned in newsletter after newsletter, you give away your security information on a daily basis. In the case of Kernel, he guessed at her security questions based on freely available public information!
Now we know this is a widely publicised case because Sara Palin is running for VP. But, the truth is, Sara Palin’s identity could’ve been compromised with this hack had she more information in that account than what was published on wikileaks.org!
This is not only a random act of political hacking - it should be a warning to all of you out there!
I recently mentioned that my two sisters have become victims of having their identity compromised. My baby sister because she and my brother-in-law have Countrywide mortgage and they were notified of the recent employee breach.
My older sister had her identity compromised when someone used her credit card to purchase online games 5 days after she picked up her computer from a new repair shop and 1 day after using it to pay a US Cellular bill over her cellular phone. Anthony Valente (our new instructor and Certified Ethical Hacker), and I agree that it was probably a breach at the new computer shop. (She didn’t want to bother me was her reason for taking it to a new repair shop!)
While you cannot avoid the breaches such as what happened at Countrywide, you can avoid the breaches like Sara Palin’s and my older sisters.
Remember, security is a process not a destination. Knowledge is your only key to power! Learn to protect yourself!
For those of you looking for the Senator’s vote list, you can download it here: http://mice.org/getit/senators_vote.pdf
Be prepared for next Tuesday’s Patch Tuesday! Microsoft has released their advanced notification about the upcoming bulletins due to be released on October 14.
Scheduled to be released are 4 critical, 6 important and 1 moderate level bulletin, covering everything from Active Directory through IE and various flavors of Windows.
They are also issuing the latest update to their Malicious Software Removal Tool which should be named, “The I don’t know what I’m removing tool” as well as MU, WU, and WSUS.
And no, those are not Greek Sororities or Fraternities! They are Microsoft Update (MU), Windows Update (WU), and WSUS (Windows Server Update Service).
Check out the advanced notification here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-oct.mspx
North Carolina settled with Credit Card Fraudsters.
You just never know what I’m reading! 
In my latest edition from Direct Magazine’s Newsletter, North Carolina Attorney General settled with an Arizona company that was selling credit cards to consumers that they never received over the phone.
Note: Remember me speaking about identity theft above? DO NOT EVER GIVE AWAY ANY INFORMATION TO TELEMARKETER’S OVER THE PHONE! HOW DO YOU KNOW WHO THEY REALLY ARE?
It amazes me that people are still falling for these types of scams! Your concerns about your security and your identity should have you hanging up on these people or telling them to mail you whatever solicitation they’d like and you’ll look at it.
And since I was up so early this morning, I was able to get some extra reading done. And just when you think we don’t have enough problems with the world economic crisis, the UK gets hit with another problem!
A computer hard drive from the Ministry of Defense has gone missing!
Yes, Yahoo News published the report from London here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081010/wl_uk_afp/britaindefenceitsecurityprivacy
According to the article, a portable hard drive containing the personal details of some 100,000 serving military personnel, over half the total armed forces has vanished.
Also on the portable drive was data on 600,000 potential applicants to the armed forces and the names of their referees, in the latest in a string of embarrassing data losses by the government in the past year.
We can only hope that they find the drive and realize it was just moved and they didn’t realize someone had moved it. It could happen!
One last thing! What’s up with Feedburner? One minute I have over 12 subscribers, the next day 9, the next day 6. Can this be trusted? Anyone?
Well, I think that’s my bit of housekeeping for today. Look for the upcoming series on slow computers to start this weekend!
Have a great day!
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