Skype account hacked

I received an email from Skype around lunch time on Monday that the email address associated with my account had changed. Once that had occurred, it was too late to sign into the account they had already changed the password and initiated a few purchase transactions. I was online with Skype support immediately to report the account take over and get it shut down.

I have not used Skype recently so how this happened I am still trying to figure out.

One thing to be aware of: if you did have me as a connection in Skype, please disconnect me. That connection (account) is no longer good and the account itself will not be used again.

How secure do you feel?

Security in perception vs reality, also a problem with words. Worth thinking about!



How secure do you feel?

Cyber safety around the holidays

I read this recently from Moira Cronin, the cybermom on the McAfee Security Insights blog:

It’s important to be a little more cautious while surfing the net for that perfect pressie for your loved ones this Christmas. So in the spirit of the season, I’d like to share with you some tips to avoid the most popular scams at Christmas time – I’ve taken these from McAfee’s twelve scams of Christmas report.

and since I just advertised the Fidelity venture for FutureStage which sends out e-cards, this caught my eye.

Scam 3:  The dangers of holiday e-cards

We all want to be more environmentally aware and proactive, so the idea of sending a festive e-card is appealing, however beware.  Last year McAfee Labs discovered a worm masked as a Hallmark e-card and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola holiday promotions.  Holiday themed PowerPoint e-mail attachments are also popular among cybercriminals, so be careful what you click on.

Read the full posting from Moira Cronin here.

It is good practice to be careful what and where you click everyday and more especially around the holidays.

Another lyricist found

Frequent readers know that I have a habit of rewriting improving some song lyrics. (If you are a new reader, you can check out the Foolish Music Songbook to view the samples).

I found someone else with the same inspiration and actually better talent for pulling this off.

You can view these two treatments by Paco Hope here




and here



I hope you enjoyed these!

With apologies to two of my favorite singers; Billy Joel and Paul Simon.

dark reading

No, this is not when you pull up in a corner with a good book and you get so into it, it doesn't matter that the sun has set and the room is darker than when you started making it hard to read the words on the page.

No, this is dark and scary stuff. Good food for conspiracy theorists but with a dose of reality, as in, this stuff is happening around the corner.

Recent updates:

Trojan Attacks Multimedia Files Stored on Hard Drives JULY 10, 2008 | Infected audio and video files show no signs of malware, but are lethal when shared with other users

Congress Opens Debate on Behavioral Advertising JULY 9, 2008 | Businesses say tracking users' online behavior is a benefit; privacy advocates say it's a threat

FasTrak Toll Hacked, Exposing Privacy Dangers JULY 9, 2008 | Researcher finds electronic toll tag vulnerabilities in Black Hat 'Highway to Hell' research

iDefense Revamps Bucks for Bugs Contest JULY 8, 2008 | Changes aimed at making vulnerability research 'sexy' again, iDefense says

Vendors Issue Massive Simultaneous Patch for Common Internet Flaw JULY 8, 2008 | Design flaw in DNS protocols could have been used to redirect traffic across the Internet

That should provide some taste of the dark reading available in the IT security world.