Tuesday, April 27, 2010

May be your face book account is on sale too

The great security company,Verisign announce that the private information of 1.5 millions face book users are in auction illegally.$25 for 1000 users which have less than 10 friends and $40 for ore than it.
Hacker who is called Carlos was born in russia and is living in newssland have done it.
Rick Havard ,iDefence manager says:"they can use this information to get access to financial debit and credit account".
Officials can`t say how many users exactly are attacked by him,but they suggest users to improve their security.
According to the recent news ,700k accounts are on sale by him now.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Aliens almost certainly exist

Hawking says that in a universe with 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it is unlikely that earth is the only place where life has evolved.

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said.
"The real challenge is working out what aliens might actually be like."

Hawking says that they could be microbes – basic animals such as worms which have been on Earth for millions of years, but suggests that extraterrestrial life could develop much further.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," Hawking said.

"I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach."

The scientist, who is paralysed by motor neurone disease, warned that contact with alien life could spell disaster for the human race.

"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the American Indians."

Hackers Steal $50,000 , be carefull!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

some years ago, Fan Bao opened a checking account at Bank of America to facilitate his small import-export business called ZICO USA. When he needed to transfer money, he or his wife, Cathy Huang, would walk a few blocks to Bank of America’s Highland Park, Calif., branch and execute the wire in person.

But some times ago, a BofA branch official impulsed Bao to do his transfering online, assuring him that it was every bit as safe as banking in person. Only wires sent from Zico’s computer, accompanied by a downloaded security certificate, would be honored, he was asked. Bao followed the bank’s security direction to the letter, and accepted the bank’s assurances that his money was safe.

But after one year, two fraudulent drafts were sent through Bao’s account–one for $50,000 and another for $99,100. Both drafts were going to a bank in Croatia that Bao had never done business with. In fact, Bao had never before sent a wire transfer to anyone outside of Hong Kong or China.

The bank recognized that the transfers were improbable, but didn’t stop them. A bank official called Bao to report “unusual activity” on his account, but refused to tell him what it was because Huang was the company’s only “authorized agent” and she was on a business trip in Hong Kong, according to court filings. When Huang was able to reach BofA later that day, the couple discovered that nearly $150,000 in unauthorized wires had been charged to their business.

Huang immediately denounced the charges as unauthorized and fraudulent. The bank was subsequently able to stop payment on the second draft for $99,100, but the other $50,000 already had been paid to the Croatian bank and the money had been withdrawn. When Bao asked for the money back, Bank of America told him the missing $50,000 wasn’t their problem.

Why? Bao had accepted the bank’s “terms and conditions” when opening the business checking account, which said that the bank did not have to make any special effort to “detect errors” in wire transfer requests. Wire transfer rules only require the bank to follow standard security protocol, which includes encrypting accounts. In a five-page response that Nada Alnajafi, Bao’s attorney, calls a “form letter,” the bank cites wire transfer rules that say that for Bao to recover the fraud loss from the bank, he has to prove that it was the bank–not Bao–that had the security breach.

Bao has seen no other indication of hacking on his own computers, Alnajafi said. Aside from these two wires, neither this nor any of his other financial accounts, have been hit. Nonetheless, the bank says in its letter that it suspects that given the amount of “malware” in the online community, Zico’s computer was infected with some type of “keylogging virus” that captured his user credentials. Thus, he’s stuck. If Bao contends otherwise, it’s incumbent on the small business owner to file suit against one of the nation’s biggest banks to prove it.

He’s done just that. Bao says in the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, that the fraud occurred only weeks before the bank was set to initiate tightened security procedures that included a “SafePass token.” The bank informed him they were adding this level of security in late May and Bao immediately signed up. But the bank didn’t “activate” Bao’s safe pass until July 13th. The fraud occurred on June 22.

Bao’s suit indicates that he suspects that bank employees are in on the scam. He is alleging negligence and breach of good faith and fair dealing, among other things. He asks for his money back.

Bank spokeswoman Shirley Norton said the bank has not been served with the suit, so it cannot comment on the allegations. Citing client confidentiality, the bank also would not comment on any specific client matter. But Norton said that the bank takes safeguarding client information very seriously.

“BA Direct includes an advanced security mechanism with layered security controls for authenticating wire transfers,” she said in an email. “Those controls include personal digital certificates, encryption, customized authorization and entitlement, separation of duties, automatic log-offs and password expiration.”

“Our security procedure is consistent with those used by other major banks to authenticate wire transfers.”

The only thing Norton said that could give some comfort on the “could it happen to you” front is that business accounts present more risk than personal accounts.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

online sport betting

Since 2006, the United States finally got what they have been trying many years to do: make online sports gambling illegal for everyone in the United States. Internet gambling was and still is a complex issue. The interstate wire act of 1961 was established to stop sports gambling activities to be completed via the phone. Lots of people were wondering if this act applied to the Internet. Since the act was established in 1961 before Internet was invented, no one really knew if the law was applicable. In addition the act did not clarify to what type of gambling it was meant for. Was it for all types of gambling or was it just for sports betting?

With all of the questions surfacing among this topic there was one certainty. If you own and ran a gambling website you will be pursued by the government until the end of days. That is one thing that they take extremely serious. Obviously, if you take care of the source you take care of the problem. In addition, it's much harder to go after ten million individuals then it is to target several hundred website owners.

There is a big ongoing debate right now regarding sports gambling. Those who are strongly against it believe that it will lead to games being fixed. In reality, it's not likely to happen in professional sports as it would be quite difficult to have players, coaches, referees, and owners all to be involved to fix the outcome of all games. Those that are in favor of sports betting are saying that it's just something people to do for purely entertainment purposes while they watch the game. My personal opinion is that sports gambling will eventually take you for everything you own.

I have known a lot of sports gamblers in my lifetime and they all started out small: $5 here and $10 there. Eventually, they run a bad streak and just lose everything because all they need is just 1 win to get everything back. For example, if you lose 10 times in a row (that does happen), you can lose a lot of money. 1st bet: 100, 2nd bet: 200, 3rd bet 300, 4th bet 600, 5th bet 1,200, 6th bet 2,400, 7th bet 4,800, 8th bet 9,600, 9th bet 19,200, 10th bet 38,400. If you started betting just $100 for the first bet and try to get back to even but you lose 10 times in a row that's a total loss of $76,800. I know what you're thinking. Who in the world does this? People have done it and I have seen it firsthand. Sports betting is very emotional and sometimes you just don't use your head, you bet on emotion.

There have been recent talks about making online gambling legal and then the government can just tax the bettors for their winnings. Honestly, I hope this doesn't happen because I have seen what sports gambling can do to a person. Gambling brings the devil out of people. If it was up to me, I would vote for online gambling to remain illegal in the United States.