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MoD LAPTOP STOLEN FROM McDONALDS

The Ministry of Defence says a laptop has been stolen from a member of the military as he was eating in McDonalds.

The computer was taken from under the Army captain's chair, near the MoD's Whitehall headquarters on 1 April, according to the Sun newspaper. The MoD said the data on the laptop was not sensitive, and was fully encrypted.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said that police were investigating the theft. It comes after the government tightened the rules on employees taking computers out of work.

Whitehall staff are now banned from taking unencrypted laptops or drives containing personal data outside secured office premises.

UK BANK DETAILS "FOR SALE FOR £5"

British bank account details are on sale online for as little as £5 in so-called cyber-crime supermarkets, a report says.

Criminals are also targeting social networking sites, according to a web security firm report into online crime.

Symantec says EU identities sell for more than American ones because they can be used across the EU.

Investigators say criminals are turning from online banking to social networks because their users are less careful.

According Symantec's latest twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report, UK bank account details were the most advertised items on black-market forums used to trade stolen information.

The data is most often sold via instant-message groups or Web forums that are live for only a few days or even hours, according to Symantec.

Cyber-crime bulk buys

It says the hacking community exacts harsh consequences when members try to pass along incorrect information - if an account does not contain the funds it is advertised as holding, the ability of that vendor to sell data again plummets.

Symantec also saw bulk-buying of personal details which had been packaged up in bargain bundles.

In the final half of 2007, the security firm saw 50 credit card numbers for sale at £20 (£0.40 each), and 500 credit card numbers for £100 (£0.20 each).

After credit cards, full identities were the third most common item advertised for sale - making up 9% of all advertised goods, an increase from 6% in the first half of 2007.

Symantec concluded that identity trading was on the increase and that even stolen eBay accounts were now being put up for sale.

 

 

 

 

Welcome to the Forward ITC Newsletter for May 2008

I DON'T BELIEVE IT!

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NET CARD FRAUD UNDERESTIMATED"

UK credit and debit card fraud on the internet is much greater than previous estimates, new figures suggest.

Banking industry data shows card losses from phone, internet or mail order crime totalled £290.5m in 2007.

But a BBC investigation found £500m of fraud took place when failed attempts were taken into account.

An undercover investigation by BBC News revealed how easy it was to obtain stolen credit and debit card details on the internet.

Posing as computer hackers, two journalists infiltrated a website selling thousands of stolen card details which had been stolen online from small internet retailers.

When the cards were used, they traced the fraudulent transactions to a number of addresses in the UK and confronted people who signed for the goods they had bought. The information is being passed to the police.

In March, the Association of Payment Clearing Services (Apacs) said there was a 25% rise in the fraudulent use of UK credit and debit cards last year, with losses amounting to £535m.

Some £290.5m of this took place on the internet, via phone or mail order, where the credit or debit card holder was not present, a year-on-year rise of 37%.

Apacs said the first rise in three years of overall card fraud was mainly due to stolen and counterfeit cards used abroad. Card fraud overseas rose by 77% last year to £208m and accounted for 39% of the total.

As well as investing £29m over three years to fight online fraud, the government also said it was working with the banking industry to encourage retailers to adopt anti-fraud initiatives.

 

FUNSPOT!

 

 

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HSBC LOSES CUSTOMER DATA DISC

The HSBC banking group has admitted losing a computer disc with the details of 370,000 customers.

The disc was lost four weeks ago after being sent by courier from the bank's offices in Southampton.

The customers' details included their names, dates of birth, and their levels of life insurance cover.

However, there are no addresses or bank account details and HSBC said the customers' exposure to potential fraud was limited.

"We are looking into it and basically it has got lost from A to B," said an HSBC spokesman.

"The reinsurer we sent it to is doing a thorough search for the disc. We will do anything we can to find it."

"There are no financial details there in terms of banking details. There are no address details or anything like that," he added.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has been informed of the data loss and is likely to mount an investigation.

In the past year, both the Nationwide building society and the Norwich Union insurance company have suffered heavy fines and public reprimands for not looking after customer details properly.

In the most spectacular example yet of data loss, the HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) lost some computer discs while in transit between London and Newcastle.

These contained the entire child benefit data base, covering 25 million claimants, including full bank and building society details.

The discs have not yet been recovered.

OOPS!

When a Dell laptop exploded at a Japanese trade show in 2006, word of other laptop fires began to surface. Faulty batteries were blamed. Two recall programs for Dell and Apple cost battery maker Sony an estimated £90 million.

 

Two partners used different and incompatible versions of the same software to design and assemble the Airbus A380 jetliner in 2006. When Airbus tried to bring together two halves of the aircraft, the wiring on one did not match the wiring in the other. That caused at least a one year and very costly delay to the project.

 

The AT&T network in America collapsed in 1990, caused by an error in a single line of code in a software upgrade. Some 75 million phone calls across the USA went unanswered.