A disturbing increase in pharming—the latest online scam to lure potential identity-theft victims—has security experts apprehensive. While phishing uses email spam to deliver fake messages to entice individuals to reveal personal or financial information, pharming automatically directs computer users from a legitimate Web site to a fraudulent mirror image of that site without any warning. The San Jose Mercury News reports the deceptive site collects passwords, credit card numbers, and other private information for potential misuse. Pharming exploits the Net’s Domain Name System (DNS) used to translate a Web site’s address into numerical code for online routing. Because pharming requires a level of technical sophistication beyond most hackers, experts do not believe it will ever outgrow phishing. But pharming is more sinister, more difficult to detect, and can take several forms. As VeriSign Principal Scientist Phillip Hallam-Baker warns: "If we don’t take DNS security seriously, at some point we’re going to get clobbered."
Mindful of Trust
Scientists from CalTech and Baylor College of Medicine have successfully visualized feelings of trust developing in a specific area of the human brain through the use of a novel MRI technique called hyperscanning. The New York Times reports pairs of anonymous subjects were strapped into MRI scanners 1,500 miles apart. They played 10 consecutive rounds of a risk-taking game that involved balancing monetary profit and personal trust. While the subjects played, the scanners, synchronized through the Internet, measured the reactions of their brains. As the players developed trusting feelings, scientists could trace how blood flow increased in the caudate nucleus, an area in the rear part of the brain involved in processing rewards. Scientists say the success of this experiment opens several branches of research in a relatively new field—real-time brain imaging of human social interactions.
Asian Jam Session
Frustrated by its inability to attract top-notch engineers to its year-old R&D Center in India, Google decided to take its popular Code Jam on the road. After staging successful Code Jams in the U.S. in a search for the best and fastest coders in the land, Google hosted its first Jam in Asia. In a region where the technology market is so hot CS students are assured jobs a year before graduation, Google has found its recruitment efforts there lagging. BusinessWeek reports the response to the contest—where winning coders receive $6,900 and a coveted job at one of Google’s R&D centers—drew over 14,000 registrants from all over South and Southeast Asia for the first round last February. The top 50 were chosen for the finals in Bangalore in early spring: 39 from India, eight from Singapore, and three from Indonesia. In the end, a third-year undergraduate computer engineering student from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University took first place but did not commit to a Google job; he is reportedly considering a Ph.D. in CS in the U.S.
The remarkable fact that 135 million people learned they can trust a complete stranger. That’s had an incredible social impact. People have more in common than they think.
—eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, pondering the most significant lesson learned from the auction site on its 10th anniversary.
Schools Unplugged, FCC Undone
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, has blasted the Federal Communications Commission for its poor handling of funds slated to connect U.S. public schools and libraries to the Net. USA Today reports more than one-third of nearly $15 billion raised to "plug in" schools across the country as part of the Schools and Libraries program (better known as the E-Rate program) has gone unspent, even as some cities go begging for cash. A GAO report blames the FCC for allowing more than $5 billion to languish over the past seven years. Moreover, the FCC did a poor job policing fraud and does not even understand how much E-Rate has helped the national push for universal Internet access. FCC officials have acknowledged poor oversight but say they have already put stronger policies in place.
Data for a Song
Who needs phishing expeditions when you can get the most personal information from strangers by just dangling a pair of theater tickets as bait? Such was the case in London recently when a group of (phony) market researchers took to the streets stopping passersby to participate in a survey of theater-going habits. BBC News reports 92% of the people participating in the survey ultimately revealed such personal details as their mother’s maiden name, first school, and birth date simply for the chance to win a pair of tickets. The cleverly worded questions made people hand over personal information without even realizing it. ("Many actors have stage names created using a pet’s name and the actor’s mother’s maiden name. If you were an actor, what would your stage name be?") The survey, which questioned 200 people, was carried out for Infosecurity Europe 2005, an annual conference dedicated to information security (www.infosec.co.uk/).
A Fitting Solution
A robotic scanning device that helps customers find the most complementary clothing for their body size is touring a select group of Levi’s stores across the U.S. The Intellifit system, originally developed for airport security, is housed in a transparent glass cylinder 10-ft. high by 8-ft. wide. A vertical wand sweeps around the interior, measuring a fully clothed shopper’s figure in a 10-second process that calculates measurements for over 200 body parts. The information is then printed out at the computer console, including suggestions for the jeans that may prove the best fit. "It takes three minutes finding the jeans, instead of hours," said one customer, who had success with one of the two pairs of jeans noted by the system.
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