Thursday, March 30, 2006

Why Phishing Works. Why Phishing Works. h0neyp0t writes  "Harvard and Berkeley have released a study that shows why phishing attacks work (pdf). When asked if a phishing site was legit or a spoof, 23% of users use only the content of the website to make the decision! The majority of users ignore the address and SSL indicators in the browser. Some users think that favicons and lock icons in HTML are more important indicators. The paper hints that the proposed IE7 security indicators and multi-colored address bar will also suffer a similar fate. This study is brought to you by the people who developed the security skins Firefox extension."  [Slashdot] 2:16:01 PM

Report: Looking for love in all the wrong places Despite all the dire warnings about legal liabilities and security risks, a new study indicates one in five workers uses his or her company's Web access for personal use. Among the industries reporting the highest abuse is the male-dominated manufacturing field, where nearly 13% of users try accessing forbidden pornography, dating and gambling sites. Its workforce also tended to chat longest with friends while at work. Government workers, meantime, were more likely to be lured to a site containing spyware and malicious code, according to a just-released report by content-filtering software provider Burstek, a unit of Burst Technology Inc. based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The study of 10,688 employees in seven industries reflects the reality of Internet usage in the office. Twenty percent of all Internet access at work was for personal use, accounting for 21% of a company's bandwidth costs. The study included education, engineering, finance, government, healthcare, manufacturing and non-profit organizations -- some of which used content filtering software and others that merely monitored their employees' behavior. 9:54:25 AM

Technologist proposes Net neutrality solution. Technologist proposes Net neutrality solution. A former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission is calling for a fact-based solution to the Net neutrality issue, to be determined by a neutral group of experts, meeting out of the glare of the current hype. [Public Knowledge - Breaking News] 9:32:46 AM

© Copyright 2006 Paul Hardwick. Last update: 4/4/06; 2:22:17 PM.