Youth uses uncle’s debit card to ‘purchase’ his own phone online

It was a smart crime involving a smart phone that was caught on the web. A youth, who used his uncle’s ATM/debit card to buy his own cell phone from a shopping website, was caught by the cyber crime cell, Hazratganj a couple of days ago. He had posted his Samsung Galaxy S-III for sale on the shopping website — www.ebay.in — that facilitates online sale and purchase of mobiles, gadgets and other stuff.

Complainant RS Srivastava (the youth’s uncle) received an SMS alert on his cell phone at 5.27pm on October 4 that his SBI account debit card had been used for purchase of a phone worth Rs. 25,000.

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Facebook used to kidnap, traffic Indonesian girls

DEPOK(INDONESIA): When a 14-year-old girl received a Facebook friend request from an older man she didn't know, she accepted it out of curiosity. It's a click she will forever regret, leading to a brutal story that has repeated itself as sexual predators find new ways to exploit Indonesia's growing obsession with social media.

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The man, a 24-year-old who called himself Yogi, drove her an hour to the town of Bogor, West Java, she said in an interview. There, he locked her in a small room inside a house with at least five other girls aged 14 to 17. She was drugged and raped repeatedly - losing her virginity in the first attack.
After one week of torture, her captor told her she was being sold and shipped to the faraway island of Batam, known for its seedy brothels and child sex tourism that caters to men coming by boat from nearby Singapore.
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Google FUD or State-Sponsored Attack Threat?

Select users of Google’s services are once again receiving warnings regarding the possibility that they may be at risk of falling victim to state-sponsored attacks. Is this just more fear, uncertainty and doubt, or is there a legitimate threat backing up the move by the search engine giant?

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“First, it generates fear on the part of Google’s customers because regardless of the fine print, such a warning will most likely send the recipient into panic mode when there’s no reason to panic. Second, it makes a claim which upon investigation is so vague that it’s meaningless. You may be the victim of a state or someone working on a state’s behalf? That’s pretty much the case for all targeted attacks,” wrote security consultant Jeffery Carr, founder and CEO of Taia Global.

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“The bottom line as far as Google’s advice is concerned is that it’s FUD-inducing for the people who aren’t targets and its insufficient for those who are. I have to wonder what Google was thinking when it created this awful program.”

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Managed Ransomware-as-a-Service spotted in the wild

By Dancho Danchev

Over the past several quarters, we’ve witnessed the rise of the so called Police Ransomware also known as Reveton.

From fully working host lock down tactics, to localization in multiple languages and impersonation of multiple international law enforcement agencies, its authors proved that they have the means and the motivation to continue developing the practice, while earning tens of thousands of fraudulently obtained funds.

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According to the advertisement, the actual malicious executable is both x32 and x64 compatible, successfully blocking system keys and other attempts to kill the malicious application. The cybercriminals behind the managed service have already managed to localize their templates in the languages of 13 prospective European countries such as Switzerland, Greece, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Portugal, Finland, Spain, Germany, and Austria.

The price for the service? $1,000 on a monthly basis for a managed, bulletproof command and control infrastructure.

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The managed service relies primarily on the Ukash voucher-based payment system, and the command and control interface conveniently displays the voucher codes and their monetary value, allowing the users of the service an easy way to claim the money from the vouchers.

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Basic Use of Maltego for Network Intelligence Gathering

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The Philippines Passes a Cybercrime Prevention Act that Makes SOPA Look Reasonable

The dark days of SOPA and PIPA are behind the US, at least temporarily as copyright tycoons reground and restrategize, attempting to come up with measures that don’t cause the entire internet to shut down in protest
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Yes, there’s the usual hacking, cracking, identity theft and spamming, which most of us can agree should be illegal. But there’s also cybersex, pornography, file-sharing (SOPA’s main target) and the most controversial provision, online libel.

Now, as someone who has been the target of many a vicious attack from commenters or forum posters, I can understand frustration with the nature of online anonymous criticism. But to actually try to make such a thing illegal? You wade into dangerous waters that anything resembling freedom of speech will likely drown in. And that’s overlooking the free speech implications trampled by banning pornography and file-sharing as well, two provisions getting less attention due to the severity of the libel section.

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Cybercrime law takes effect amid Supreme Court inaction

Manila -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday deferred action on the petitions filed by various groups questioning the constitutionality of some provisions in the Cybercrime Prevention Act, paving the way for the law to take effect the same day.

The Court, meeting as a group, did not issue an order freezing the questioned provisions to allow them to study those before  tackling the case again next Tuesday.

“The [Supreme Court] did not issue a [temporary restraining order] in the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 petitions which are up for further study,” high court spokeswoman Maria Victoria Gleoresty Guerra said in an interview.

She said the Court also did not require the petitioners to submit their comments.

In the House, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said he was confident that the controversial provisions in the new law–including the higher penalties for libel–would pass the  constitutional test before the Supreme Court.

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White House thwarts cyber attack

A White House official said the attack targeted an unclassified network. He said the attack was identified and the system was isolated to prevent spread. He said there was no indication that any data was removed.

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Last year, Google blamed computer hackers in China for a phishing effort against Gmail accounts of several hundred people, including senior U.S. government officials and military personnel. Last November, senior US intelligence officials for the first time publicly accused China of systematically stealing American hi-tech data for its own national economic gain.

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Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, during a visit to China last month, raised the subject of China-based cyber-attacks against U.S. companies and the government.

The Obama administration is preparing an executive order with new rules to protect US computer systems.

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An initial draft of the order included provisions for voluntary cybersecurity standards for companies.

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An application can make your phone spy on you

LONDON: US military experts have demonstrated a new smartphone app that can turn your mobile's camera into a spying tool for cyber criminals, secretly beaming images of your house, chequebook and other private information back to them.

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The app 'PlaiceRaider' was created by US military experts at Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Indiana, to show how cybercriminals could operate in the future, the Daily Mail reported. 

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The team said they could glean vital information from all 20 users, and that the 3D reconstruction made it much easier to steal information than by just using the images alone.

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Researcher Robert Templeman said their app can run in the background of any smartphone using the Android 2.3 operating system. Through use of phone's camera and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs 3-D models of indoor environments. "Remote burglars can thus download the physical space, study the environment carefully, and steal virtual objects from the environment," researchers said.

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