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In 2009, there were a reported 140 million records compromised, compared to 360 million in 2008. In 2010 there have been almost 13 million records stolen. But don’t have a party just yet. Criminals are fine-tuning their craft and getting better. The industry just isn’t making it as easy. 97% of those records were stolen using malware – malicious software designed to attack the target’s existing systems and software in place.

A reported 50% of the malware was installed remotely. Almost 20% came from visiting infected websites and almost 10% was installed when employees clicked infected links that conned or “socially engineered” them.

A recent Verizon report stated, “Over the last two years, custom-created code was more prevalent and far more damaging than lesser forms of customization, the attackers seem to be improving in all areas: getting it on the system, making it do what they want, remaining undetected, continually adapting and evolving, and scoring big for all the above.”

This may be also attributed to an inside job. A rogue employee on the inside always has the advantage of knowing exactly how to remain undetected.

The report further stated that organized crime rings may “recruit, or even place, insiders in a position to embezzle or skim monetary assets and data, usually in return for some cut of the score, the smaller end of these schemes often target cashiers at retail and hospitality establishments while the upper end are more prone to involve bank employees and the like.”

In the past three years that’s a total of 513 million records. On average, every citizen has had his or her data compromised almost twice. Where’s your Social Security number in that mix?

It is important to observe basic security precautions to protect your identity. However, the safety of your information with corporations and other entities that you transact business with is very often beyond your control. Consumers should consider an identity theft protection product that offer daily credit monitoring, proactive identity surveillance, lost wallet protection, and alerts when suspicious activity is detected on your accounts. McAfee Identity Protection includes all these features in addition to live help from fraud resolution agents if your identity is ever compromised. For more tips on protecting yourself, please visit http://www.counteridentitytheft.com

Robert.

Robert Siciliano is a McAfee consultant and identity theft expert. See him discuss another data breach on Fox News. (Disclosures)

Robert_Siciliano@McAfee.com
www.CounterIdentityTheft.com

A creepy caricature of Google CEO Eric Schmidt drives an ice cream truck in this video produced by a consumer group targeting the search giant for its data collection practices.

The video is part of a lobbying effort by Consumer Watchdog to get the government to create a so-called “Do Not Track Me” list “to prevent online companies from gathering our personal information, just as Congress had the Federal Trade Commission create a Do Not Call list to prevent intrusive telemarketers.” The group says they’ve paid to have a version of the video shown 36 times per day on a jumbotron in Times Square.

It’s not the first anti-Google antic from the group, which is largely funded by legal fees, the Rose Foundation, Streisand Foundation, Tides Foundation and others. Last month the group announced it had parked outside lawmakers’ Washington-area residences to determine whether they had unsecured Wi-Fi networks that might have been sniffed by Google as part of the internet giant’s Street View and Google Maps program.

The group did that in an unsuccessful bid to bring attention to the Google Wi-Fi debacle and get the House Energy and Commerce Committee to haul Google executives in for questioning. Once there, the group wanted Google to explain why, for three years, Google was sniffing data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks in neighborhoods in dozens of countries.

Google, which owns YouTube, has said that was a mistake, but legal.

Consumer Watchdog’s brief video capitalizes on the Wi-Fi issue and Schmidt’s previous statement about privacy: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

See Also:

• Google Wins Viacom Copyright Lawsuit
• Google Books Fosters Intellectual, Legal Crossroads
• Former Prosecutor: Google Wi-Fi Snafu ‘Likely’ Illegal
• Lawyers Claim Google Wi-Fi Sniffing ‘Is Not an Accident’
• Consumer Group Sniffs Congresswoman’s Open Wi-Fi
• Privacy in Peril: Lawyers, Nations Clamor for Google Wi-Fi Data
• Packet-Sniffing Laws Murky as Open Wi-Fi Proliferates

A phone-hacking scheme involving British royals and reporters working for one of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers went far beyond what was previously disclosed and prosecuted, according toThe New York Times.

Andy Coulson, currently media advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, is accused of having encouraged the hacking during his tenure as editor of Murdoch’s News of the World paper.

According to the N.Y. Times, reporters working under Coulson targeted hundreds of victims — from Princes Harry and William to government and police officials and numerous celebrities, including soccer star David Beckham and his wife.

Most of the victims are only now learning that their phone voicemail accounts may have been accessed by reporters, four years after the investigation first launched. One young woman, who had previously been the victim in a high-profile sexual-assault case when she was 19, only recently received a letter confirming that her phone number was on a list of potential hack targets kept by News of the World employees.

Scotland Yard is being accused of violating the rights of victims by failing to inform them earlier that they were targeted and of purposely narrowing the investigation to a single reporter and private investigator in order to preserve a special information-sharing relationship law enforcement agents had with the tabloid. The investigation focused only on Clive Goodman, a veteran reporter who covered the royal family, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator who worked for the tabloid.

Access to private voicemail messages occurred in two ways. In some cases, victims had simply neglected to change a default password phone carriers established for every new account. Anyone who knew the default four-digit code for a particular carrier — such as 1111 or 4444 — could access the accounts if they knew the victim’s phone number.

Where victims did change the password, the paper’s private investigators found another way to trick phone carriers into revealing the code. The N.Y. Times story does not detail the second method. In the United States, phone hackers have been known to use caller I.D. spoofing to access a victim’s voicemail. The hacker calls the target’s cellphone after setting their caller I.D. to the same number, which on some wireless carriers will drop the call right into the voicemail retrieval menu.

Although Coulson has long insisted he knew nothing about the illegal activity, sources who worked at the tabloid told the N.Y. Times Coulson not only knew about it, he actively encouraged it. A dozen former reporters said the hacking was so pervasive at News of the World that everyone knew about it. “The office cat knew,” one longtime reporter said.

It all began to unravel in November 2005, when three aides to the royal family noticed that new voicemail messages received on their mobile phones were appearing in their mailboxes as if they’d already been listened to and saved. Then stories about Prince William began appearing in News of the World that made them think their phone accounts had been compromised.

Scotland Yard’s counterintelligence division, which handles the security of the royal family, launched an investigation, which ultimately focused on Goodman and Mulcaire. For six months, officials tracked the two suspects as they hacked into the voicemail accounts of royal family members and workers in the royal household.

In one message retrieved from Prince Harry’s phone, his brother William teased him about a minor scandal that hit the papers involving Harry and a stripper. Harry’s girlfriend Chelsy was apparently upset over the incident, and William called to tease his brother. News of the World boldly quoted his voice mail message in a story.

When police raided Mulcaire’s home, they found dozens of notebooks and computer files containing 2,978 complete or partial mobile phone numbers of potential victims, 91 mobile phone PIN codes, and 30 tape recordings made by Mulcaire. Mulcaire and Goodman were charged with conspiracy to unlawfully intercept communications, and that’s where the investigation ended. Police never questioned other reporters or editors at News of the World.

In the course of their investigation, Scotland Yard alerted only five other victims — whose names appeared in the indictments against Goodman and Mulcaire — and a handful of other people “with national security concerns: members of the government, the police and the military.”

George Galloway, a member of Parliament, was among those alerted, as were Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association; Simon Hughes, a member of Parliament; supermodel Elle Macpherson; Max Clifford, a top public-relations agent who often fed exclusive gossip to News of the World but had fallen out with the tabloid shortly before his voicemail account was breached; and Sky Andrew, who represented top soccer stars.

Goodman and Mulcaire pleaded guilty to unlawful interception and were sentenced to several months in prison. They also lost their jobs with News of the World, but then sued for wrongful dismissal.

Mulcaire got 80,000 pounds (about $120,000) from the media outlet, and Goodman received an undisclosed amount. Coulson resigned from his management job, but was then hired as head of communications for the Conservative Party.

Then the lawsuits began. Taylor, one of the victims, sued the media outlet and received 700,000 pounds (more than $1 million) in a settlement, including legal expenses.

Clifford, another victim, didn’t have to sue. Instead he reached an agreement with his old media partner: In exchange for receiving 1 million pounds (about $1.5 million), the PR rep would resume feeding exclusive gossip to the paper.

Now five other victims have filed lawsuits against News Group Newspapers, the Murdoch division that oversees News of the World. The suits will likely increase as more people learn they were victims. Another suit is being prepared against Scotland Yard.

Photo courtesy chrstopher/Flickr

See Also:

• iPhone Jailbreaking Could Crash Cellphone Towers, Apple Claims
• International Phone Hacking Ring Busted; Stole $55 Million Worth of Calls
• Teenage Hacker Is Blind, Brash and in the Crosshairs of the FBI

After a daylong standoff, authorities shot and killed an armed man wearing an explosive device who had taken three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside the District of Columbia.

Most of the hundreds of employees, including children at an on-site daycare center, had already been evacuated, police said. The station was airing its normal broadcast. The three hostages were safe and out of the building, the police said.

The 43-year-old suspect, James Lee, was killed by a police officer inside the building when he pointed a handgun at one of the hostages, said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger. He said the explosive device “appeared to go off” when the gunman was shot inside the building. Police were combing the building in belief they might find other explosive devices, he said.

“He pulled out the handgun he came in with and pointed it at one of the hostages,” Manger said. “But at that point, our tactical unit moved in. They shot the suspect. The suspect is deceased.”

According to a message on the savetheplanetprotest.com website believed run by Lee, the suspect demanded that the Discovery Channel broadcast its “commitment to save the planet.”

Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

From his website, and his postings on MySpace, Lee appears to be obsessed with the work of American writer Daniel Quinn, author of a trilogy of environmental philosophy novels. Quinn’s 1992 Ishmael “uses a style of Socratic dialogue to deconstruct the notion that humans are the end product, the pinnacle of biological evolution,” according to Wikipedia. “It posits that human supremacy is a cultural myth, and asserts that modern civilization is enacting that myth.”

Manger, the police chief, said officers were discussing his manifesto with the suspect during the standoff. “He obviously had a number of issues with Discovery,” Manger said.

In a December 2006 post to a MySpace group, Lee described being deeply affected by the trilogy. “I have an idea on how to save the world,” he wrote. “I need people.”

I finished reading the Daniel Quinn books last month. It started off just as a recommendation from a girl who worked at a coffeehouse. After being blown away from his writings, I looked up and saw… nothing. No revolution, no people demanding change, no talk, no news, nothing. There should have been something, right? Nothing.

Then I had an idea of my own. A vision on how the world could be saved. I thought about it and thought about it and it made sense. It was possible. It not unusual but not so common. It was an idea.

So here I am trying to make that idea a reality. Here I am putting my every last cent into that idea. I believe it can be done and I am taking the first few steps to make that idea a reality. So strongly do I believe it can be done that I am putting up all my own personal money, my retirement money.

He did not describe his idea, but Whois records show he registered savetheplanetprotest.com on January 7, 2008. He used the website to promote a sparsely attended February, 2008 rally outside the Discovery Channel headquarters, where he demanded the cable channel adapt its programming to broadcast Quinn’s vision for how to save the planet.

During the sixth day of the protest, Lee created a small riot by throwing money in the air in front of the building. The incident was captured in a YouTube video.

Lee was arrested on the scene after the money-throwing. He resurfaced on the internet two weeks later to express disappointment over how the protest had gone.

“Yeah, I guess the world did not get saved that week as I had hoped,” he wrote. “Was that a failure? Probably. Imagine the police holding me for 2 whole weeks!!! They threw me in the nuthouse for 4 days without bond and then continued to hold me for 2 weeks total until they could ‘verify’ my address and threw me in a homeless shelter. It was total bullshit.”

Lee’s preoccupation with the Quinn novels ran through his online writings, and was reflected in his demands to the Discovery Channel. “The Discovery Channel and its affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn’s ‘My Ishmael’ pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other’s inventive ideas,” read his website.

Daniel Quinn is a kind of anarcho-environmental Ayn Rand — an idea-driven author who’s Ishmael trilogy has inspired followers around the around the world. “Ishmael for them does what the movie The Matrix did for a lot of people,” says Ted Bolha, a Pittsburgh man who formed a local discussion group for Quinn readers. “Quinn writes a lot about indigenous people, tribal people. He basically calls the civilized people ‘takers’, and the uncivilized people ‘leavers’ — they just accept what nature offers, and don’t suck the resources dry.”

“I believe Avatar was influenced by Ishmael. The whole movie of Avatar just reeks of Ishmael,” he says.

But the trilogy does not advocate violence.

“It explains how the paradigm in which our culture exists came to be, and sort of points out errors in that paradigm,” says 55-year-old Mark Maffei, a former college teacher in Illinois who used to run a discussion group for his students called the Rock River Valley Leavers. “One of the errors in the paradigm is that man is the inheritor of the Earth, the owner of the Earth … That we get to decide what creatures live and what don’t.”

“It’s not a radical notion that should cause somebody to go take hostages,” Maffei adds. “The point of his books is actually different from that. Some deranged person did a crazy act that I don’t think has anything to do with the message in the books.”

Vincent Savage, an Aspen, Colorado psychologist and Quinn fan, agrees.

“Ishmael is about a state of mind, about building one’s awareness about our place in the universe,” Savage said. “This has nothing to do with Ishmael other than this person found a convenient metaphor for acting out his own personal frustrations.”

Updated 19:00 EDT

Photo: Myspace

A civilian defense attorney hired recently by alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning says the Army was so concerned about his client’s mental health prior to the alleged leaks that supervisors removed the bolt from his military weapon, disabling it.

Attorney David Coombs told CNN, however, that other than sending Manning to a chaplain for counseling, the Army did little to address its concerns about him.

“The unit has in fact documented a history, if you will, from as early as December of 2009 to May of 2010 of behavior that they were concerned about,” Coombs said, adding that Manning’s immediate supervisor “did document prolonged periods of disassociated behavior, quite a bit of nonresponsiveness from Pfc. Manning. And, again, that progressed from the very beginning of the deployment and deteriorated somewhat toward the end.”

The Army declined to comment. “This case does have worldwide visibility and [Manning’s] civilian attorney will do the best he can to defend him and that may bring up other issues other than what is currently known,” said Lt. Col. Robert Owen, spokesman for the Army at the U.S. embassy in Iraq. “But the U.S. Army is not going to react to every statement that Manning’s civilian attorney makes.”

Manning, who is being held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia, has invoked the Fifth Amendment and is refusing to cooperate with investigators. He’s taking medication for depression and insomnia. Coombs told CNN, however, that his client is aware of the public support for him.

“Obviously, being in solitary confinement is very difficult,” Coombs said. “But the individuals at the confinement facility are very professional. They’re doing a very good job. And he’s aware of all the people who are rallying to his support. So his spirits are relatively good. In addition, he is being treated now by a forensic psychiatrist. And he is responding positively to that treatment.”

Manning is due to be examined by a panel of three mental-health experts to determine what problems he’s suffering from now and may have been suffering from at the time of the alleged leaks.

Coombs also said that he has currently seen nothing that indicates “there’s any evidence” tying his client to the leaks. It was unclear in the interview, however, whether he’s yet received discovery material in the case.  Coombs did not respond to requests for comment from Threat Level.

Manning, 22, shows in chats he conducted with former hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him in, that he was deeply troubled and conflicted. He was socially isolated and estranged from family members and described a number of personal issues that were affecting his emotional stability. He also described a growing cynicism about U.S. foreign policy that motivated his alleged leaks to WikiLeaks.

Shortly after the alleged leaks occurred, Manning was demoted after punching a fellow soldier in the face. Manning told Lamo that as a result of the incident he was “forced” to visit behavioral health personnel for an evaluation.

He’d also been admonished in the past for referencing classified facilities in personal videos he posted to YouTube.

Manning was arrested in May after telling Lamo that he was responsible for leaking a classified 2007 video showing an Army Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, which WikiLeaks published last April. Manning also claimed to have leaked an Army log of half a million military events in Iraq, a separate video of a military attack in Afghanistan in 2009, and 260,000 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables.

Manning was charged last month with leaking the Iraq video, and improperly downloading more than 150,000 State Department cables onto his unclassified personal computer. He’s charged with leaking more than 50 of them. The Pentagon has described Manning as a “person of interest” in the leaking of the 92,000-entry Afghan war log partially published by WikiLeaks in July.

WikiLeaks has never acknowledged that Manning is a source. Nonetheless the site, as well as a number of other organizations and websites, have been raising funds for Manning’s defense.

Manning isn’t the only one facing legal trouble, however.

Swedish authorities announced on Wednesday that they were re-opening a rape case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Public Prosecutions Director Marianne Ny said there was “reason to believe a crime has been committed” and that the crime was classified as rape.

She also announced she was re-classifying a second “molestation” case against Assange as one of sexual coercion and sexual molestation.

Assange, who was questioned by investigators on Tuesday, has maintained his innocence.

(Image: Anti-war protesters rally for Bradley Manning in Quantico, Virginia last month. Creative Commons photo courtesy mar is sea Y/Flickr)

See also:

• Alleged WikiLeaks Leaker Hires Civilian Attorney
• Mississippi Lawyer Drawn Into WikiLeaks Intrigue
• Cyberwar Against Wikileaks? Good Luck With That
• WikiLeaks Suspect’s YouTube Videos Raised ‘Red Flag’ in 2008
• WikiLeaks Releases Stunning Afghan War Logs — Is Iraq Next?
• Suspected WikiLeaks Source Described Crisis of Conscience Leading to Leaks
• U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in WikiLeaks Video Probe