Monthly Archives: September 2012

Articles, News, Videos

Hollywood identifies an ‘Identity Thief’ starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy

While there isn’t much that is funny about identity theft, Universal Studios may have found a way to help us laugh at some of the most difficult situations we may find ourselves in, in there upcoming movie “Identity Thief.”   Here’s the official plot from Universal:

Unlimited funds have allowed Diana (McCarthy) to live it up on the outskirts of Miami, where the queen of retail buys whatever strikes her fancy. There’s only one glitch: The ID she’s using to finance these sprees reads “Sandy Bigelow Patterson” … and it belongs to an accounts rep (Bateman) who lives halfway across the U.S.

With only one week to hunt down the con artist before his world implodes, the real Sandy Bigelow Patterson heads south to confront the woman with an all-access pass to his life. And as he attempts to bribe, coax and wrangle her the 2,000 miles to Denver, one easy target will discover just how tough it is to get your name back.

 

Identity Thief is directed by Seth Gordin and starts Jason Bateman, Melissa McCarthy, Amanda Peet, Jon Favreau, Genesis Rodriguez, John Cho, Clark Duke, Morris Chestnut. Look for it in theaters February 8th, 2013.

This isn’t the first time Hollywood has identified someone good with the tools of identity theft.   In “Untraceable”  a cyber crimes FBI agent takes on a serial murder who is using technology to not only broadcast, but to block his information from investigators.  He also uses a “spoofcard”  to start making threats against the agent and her family.  SpoofCard allows a caller to disguise the telephone number they’re calling from, identifying information, and even their voice and gender. Callers may even record a message, to access at a later time, from any phone, to be connected to and played to the receiver.

Any awareness in the mainstream of identity theft is a good thing.  Hopefully with this movie, Hollywood will take some time to address the deep and profound impact identity theft has on victims, and maybe will even cause some would-be identity thieves to take up a more legitimate line of work.  Perhaps Hollywood won’t, and they’ll just sensationalize things, but one can always hope.

Articles, Banking, Money, News

California Man with Previous Fraud Conviction Linked to Anti-Islam Movie Questioned

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Coptic Christian, was interviewed by federal probation officers voluntarily at a sheriff’s station in the LA suburb of Cerritos. The interview lasted about 30 minutes and allegedly revolved around his link to an anti-Islam movie.

The 13-minute English-language movie filmed in California and circulated on the Internet under several titles including “Innocence of Muslims,” mocks the Prophet Mohammad and portrays him as a buffoon.

Nakoula was picked up for his believed involvement in the film as a possible probation violation for a bank fraud conviction. It is said that the filmmaker went by the name, Sam Bacile, which is now believed to be Nakoula.  In 2010, he pleaded guilty to bank fraud and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and five years of supervised probation. He was also was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was accused of fraudulently opening bank and credit card accounts using Social Security numbers that did not match the names on the applications. Continue reading California Man with Previous Fraud Conviction Linked to Anti-Islam Movie Questioned →

Articles, Online Security

Was the GoDaddy Outage Really Due to a Hacker?

GoDaddy had an outage on Monday that lasted for close to six hours, leaving those with GoDaddy hosted websites and email out of service. It’s a huge inconvenience to business owners and those who depend on regular traffic to their websites. Page views were down across all of my sites and once my email did come back up, there were major delays and what appears to be lost messages between clients. In short, it was a major hassle for anyone who depended on GoDaddy services, which was millions of people.

Shortly after the outage, an alleged member of the hacker group Anonymous took credit for the outage. GoDaddy would later deny this hack, claiming their own mistake for the outage. It was not actually the full hacker group who was claiming to have done this deed but just one member who goes by the name “Anonymous Own3r” and says that he acted alone to prove GoDaddy’s vulnerabilities.

Anonymous Own3r says on Twitter: @godaddy how do you explain that a router can compromise services through e-mail hosting and other things? it’s time to you assume my hack — Anonymous Own3r (@AnonymousOwn3r) September 13, 2012

“Anonymous Own3r” seemed very stuck on making it known that he had done this hacking but really there is no proof ether way. It’s quite possible he just wanted the fame. If it’s true, he has completed one of the largest successful hacks in history. In the days that followed, he also received many shoutouts and ‘thank yous’ via Twitter for what he had done. He followed up later with a post that GoDaddy is “government owned”:

While some may have seen this as an act of vigilantism, there are many of us who were severely affected and don’t appreciate being made the target just so some hacker can prove a point to a company. Who are they really hurting when they do this? Continue reading Was the GoDaddy Outage Really Due to a Hacker? →

Articles

Hackers Want $1M for Mitt Romney’s Tax Records

There is always a great deal of scrutiny laid onto any presidential campaign as each side attempts to make their case for election.  The political backbiting can become very intense and people take sides and join in the slurs against the opponent.  In the last election, the opponents claimed President Obama was not a legal citizen and asked repeatedly for his birth certificate, which he produced but some then thought was a fake.

In the current presidential campaign, the subject of Republican hopeful Mitt Romney’s tax records has become the center of attention.  Many feel that he has not paid the taxes that every other American would pay and hackers are saying that they have located these records that Mitt Romney has refused to produce.

They want $1M for the tax records and if Romney really is hiding something and they truly have the records, it would be cheaper for him to pay them off. But first, do they even have the records? Continue reading Hackers Want $1M for Mitt Romney’s Tax Records →

Agencies, Articles, Identity Theft Protection

Did hacktivist group Antisec take a big bite out of Apple?

Hactivist group Antisec strikes again – or did they?  Did they manage to take a bite out of the big “Apple” and do it from and FBI agent’s Dell notebook?  According to the Anonymous-allied hackers, they have and it’s been reported that a list of 12.4 million Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDID) was gained.   This information also provided user names, device names and types and for some it included names, addresses, cell and home phone numbers.  Sounds like an identity theft nightmare, or it would be if Antisec wasn’t playing “Robin Hood” to the FBI’s Sheriff John, or so the story goes.

Did this hacking really happen?

According to the FBI (Oh no you didn’t!) .  A recent FBI statement denies stating,  “The FBI is aware of published reports alleging that an FBI laptop was compromised and private data regarding Apple UDIDs was exposed. At this time, there is no evidence indicating that an FBI laptop was compromised or that the FBI either sought or obtained this data.”

According to Antisec, Continue reading Did hacktivist group Antisec take a big bite out of Apple? →