Cryptosmith

This story, from a blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education, has a professor sleeping with a student and hacking into her e-mail. It is interesting on several levels: it happened at the University of St. Thomas where I teach, it involves computer hacking, and it’s a classic ‘inside job.’

According to news reports, the student (27) was induced by the professor (35) to open an e-mail attachment which installed a sniffer in her computer. He then used the sniffer to eavesdrop on her e-mail. Continue Reading »

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Verizon’s security blog has published a summary report of data breaches investigated by their security team. The report covers 500 security breaches they investigated between 2004 and 2007. There are a lot of graphs and tables summarizing threats and impacts.

The authors sensibly point out that this is based on a limited sample, but it’s great to see this sort of report. Many experts are skeptical about the CSI/FBI Computer Crime Survey since it simply asks industry people what they think the threats, risks, and impacts are.

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