Spammers in the can

Well...

Police shut down 1,200 scam shopping websites anyway. So, I presume, the police need computer experts to help them with this sort of thing? Might fit Jan 10 content, at least as a bit of an aside perhaps.

The 1,219 websites purported to sell items ranging from Ugg boots and Tiffany & Co jewellery to GHD hair straighteners.

Well, that'll be all my pressies then...

Apparently the Met has a specialist e-crime unit - the PCeU (Police Central e-crime Unit). Might be worth looking and seeing if you can find anything about them (e2a: here's their website - use the left hand menu to find stuff). The Met also has a Fraud Alert! webpage which may have useful bits and bobs on it. Perhaps.

Interetsingly some regulatory organisations are name checked in the article as well - Consumer Direct, Trading Standards and the Office of Fair Trading. I guess these guys must use computer people as well.

Two held in global PC fraud probe

Two held in global PC fraud probe - might be worth a look for jan10 exam

Cyber war

No, not whatever the name of that game which was released last week: this is proper war.

Article from the BBC website:

Cyber war has moved from fiction to fact, says a report.
Compiled by security firm McAfee, it bases its conclusion on analysis of recent net-based attacks.

Would seem to fit quite well for the Jan 10 exam for Unit 1...

Online money laundering

Interesting to read that an economic area of opportunity appears to be online money laundering.

The ways of tracking this would logically be useful for the Jan 10 Unit 1 exam. It's quite an interesting 'hook' for a story as well.

Phishing...

Given the people didn't seem to know what it was the other day: try this BBC article, especially given the spate of hotmail and gmail phishing problems.

97% of e-mail...

...is spam according to a Microsoft security report.

Apart from getting in the way and being generally annoying, there's an increasing rate of attachments along with all the joyous security concerns.

Out of every 1000 machines the report suggests that 8.6 are infected with a virus or malware of some kind. Interesting geographical distribution whilst we're at it:

Used in Spam overwhelms e-mail messages on the BBC website. Image originally produced by the lovely, lovely people at Microsoft...

I'd say that suggests to be careful of anything coming out of Russia and Brazil.

All the more reason to do the things which should be standard: decent anti-virus; update regularly; employ service packs; check for malware and spyware. Oh, and just don't open attachments or download stuff from sites without checking them first.

(The report) found that Office document attachments and PDF files were increasingly being targeted by hackers.

From: Spam overwhelms e-mail messages, BBC website

As I've said before, the number of people who simply don't seem to be aware they have to do this stuff always baffles me. But, you know, keep on downloading and adding friends on msm. Nothing bad can come of that...

Cyber crime report

Interesting report from the BBC Click! programme team about cyber crime.

Lots of good stuff on what happens and how to stop it happening. Well worth a read.