Cybersecurity Expert

Recently I was invited to participate on Radio Five Live debate on children’s usage of social networking sites, and specifically child bullying within Facebook. Various parents were calling the radio programme and were saying their children had suffered from issues like cyber bullying and the receipt of obscene messages from perverts. Several individuals thought the answer was to prevent their children using social networking websites and even suggesting banning children from using the Internet altogether. The main point I made was banning children from using social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace will just not work, for one banning illegal activities like under aged smoking and drinking doesn’t work, sooner or later children will find a way to access social networking websites anyway, which isn’t illegal by the way. Furthermore preventing a child from using the home PC is a reckless approach in the information age and pretty pointless exercise, as children can ac...

Gary McKinnon is in the news again after the Home Secretary, Alan Johnson refused to block the intended extradition to the United States. I was invited to comment on Radio Five Live on Friday morning, to raise points on the security and technical specifics of the case. It is clear Gary has plenty of public support in the UK, from people who believe he shouldn’t be extradited to the United States, mainly on human rights grounds. Gary’s lawyers stated he is happy to pled guilty to the crimes in a UK court, therefore he appears to be guilty of these crimes, but his lawyer feel justice just won’t be served if he was sent to a US court. I have actually meet Gary a couple of years back, however my comments on Radio Five Live were made from totally impartial and an Information Security expert’s point of view. Here is a summary of what I said. The main point to understand is, what was the motivation of Gary McKinnon’s “hacking” attack? It clearly wasn’t for fraud, as he wasn’t ...

The UK maybe still in the midst of a recession, but these times are proving anything but a recession for cybercriminals, as UK Online Banking fraud is sky rocketing at the moment. The ‘Financial Fraud Action’ showing a 55% increase for the first half of 2009, while the ‘UK Payments Administration’ figures reports a 44% year on year rise. Through my own research and underground monitoring of UK cybercriminal activity, I am seeing increasing numbers of stolen UK online bank account access details being put up for sale, and increasing numbers of keylogger malware being deployed, which are specifically targeting the theft of UK online bank access credentials covertly. Despite these increases in criminal activity and years of warnings, UK banks still aren’t doing enough to protect their customers from the dangers of the internet. Many UK banks are still yet to provide their customers with a security best practice Two-Factor authentication access to their online banking, so are making it...