The Item for today is "Another Way to Lose Your Identity."

Well, as you'd expect, the bad guys have found another way to launch an attack against us.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Users of the popular social Web site Facebook are being warned that a computer virus is being spread through a well-disguised e-mail masquerading as a video from a friend.

The site boasts over 60 million registered users, including many employees at KATU.

Reporter Dan Tilkin recently registered on the site on the advice of friends and co-workers and received what he thought was a friendly e-mail from a former producer.

A link in the e-mail led him to a Web site that appeared to play a video and prompted him to update his computer's software to see the video.

However, the download was a virus instead.

It's not clear exactly what the virus does, but it should be assumed the purpose is malicious. A computer virus is also commonly referred to as "malware," which is short for "malicious software."

Many viruses scour a computer for personal information including banking and credit card information and then send it out of the country where hackers use it steal funds from the victim.

A virus can also turn a computer into a "zombie" and help to spread the virus to other computers or launch Denial of Service attacks on Web sites without the owner realizing what is taking place.

Computer experts warn users never to download any file with an ".exe" prefix sent from anyone, even if they are a friend, and to carefully monitor what page your browser lands on.

http://www.komonews.com/news/tech/27449439.html

Welcome to Campus! Give me Your Identity!

It's college time kids!

Now we need to prep ypu for all the perps out there who will find you easy pickin' for stealing your credit card or more. The statistics on growing ID theft cases at colleges are frightening and we need to more quickly to change your behavior and teach you to be "Identity Theft Aware."

We have been working on an ID theft "condom" to make sure you practice "safe computing."

After all, the college health serives (in spite of Rush Limbaugh) may be handing out actual condoms so you have "safe sex" so we want to make sure that you also protect your identity information from "viruses" just like you do against STD's.

Unfortunately we have had a hard time making the ID condom big enough to cover your laptop so instead we are developing a short, one hour, on-line "Safe Identity behavior" workshop for you kids.

We want to encourage every college and university in the USA to include a short 10 minute presentation on Safe Identity Behavior right after the talk about safe sex during incoming or freshman orientation. Then they should send you to the web site so you can take the short seminar.

Also, don't get trashed and let someone steal your wallet, purse, bag or backpack and all that personal info you keep in there. A drunk is the best target for old fashioned "analog"ID theft!

Have fun ! Be safe!

As soon as it comes out I'll be posting a link to an article on this that will be published in a college-oriented publication soon.

Passwords Don't work!

Oh no! Once again we find that our "best practice" for security on the Net are worthless! When will all this end.

Here is the gist of the problem:

"Password-based log-ons are susceptible to being compromised in any number of ways. Consider a single threat, that posed by phishers who trick us into clicking to a site designed to mimic a legitimate one in order to harvest our log-on information. Once we’ve been suckered at one site and our password purloined, it can be tried at other sites."

"The solution urged by the experts is to abandon passwords — and to move to a fundamentally different model, one in which humans play little or no part in logging on. Instead, machines have a cryptographically encoded conversation to establish both parties’ authenticity, using digital keys that we, as users, have no need to see."

Passwords are OUT! NY Times article. NOW go ahead and read the full article.