Identity Theft

The book I read to research this post was Identity Theft Inc by Glenn Hastings et al which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. This book is written by a couple of identity thieves & tells you everything you need to know I think it's the best book on the subject I have read. This is intended for information purposes only. On a simple level a simple scam is to have a friend who has a credit card you use their credit card to buy stuff. The stuff is sent to a place you rent under a false name. At the end of the month when your friend gets their statement they say the payment is fraudulent & don't know anything about it & claim their money back. Another system is to give you the card let you buy stuff with it & an hour later report it stolen. When renting a flat for the stuff to go to you can use friends for references.  If you order stuff by phone most businesses can trace the call so you should probably use a payphone & definitely shouldn't lie about your location. If you are looking for people with an excellent credit record use a service like Experian. Arizona is the world capital of online fraud partly because it has a rapidly expanding population & because it has a lot of methamphetamine addicts. Also a lot of people who are high on drugs in the early hours of the morning find it ideal to go through other peoples garbage looking for things like unused chequebooks which they can use for fraudulent activity.

Geocaching

The book I read to research this post was Geocaching for Dummies by Joel McNamara who also wrote GPS for Dummies about which I did a post a few days ago. It is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. You need 2 things to do geocaching, an internet connection so you can visit sites like www.geocaching.com which contain the locations of the caches, & a personal GPS receiver so you can find the location for the coordinates of the location of the cache. There are literally thousands of these caches hidden around the world & when you find them there's a gift inside, which you take & replace with a gift of your own then you fill in your details in the notepad which is in there & you notify the relevant geocaching site. This sport basically lets you be Indiana Jones looking for treasure although what you find is usually a cheap trinket. On www.geocaching.com there is a basic membership which is free & there is also a premium package which lets you print out a map of the location of the cache among other things. You're not allowed to bury the cache because otherwise people would be damaging the countryside. You are allowed though to bury it under a pile of rocks. It's best to get some experience finding caches before hiding one of your own. In britain there's a game called letterboxing which is similiar except you leave clues about the location of the box & there's a site dedicated to this at

wwwletterboxing.org

Geocaching used to be called geostashing but someone suggested they change due to the illegal drugs similarity. Incidently consumer GPS doesn't work in afghanistan due to the possibility that the taliban might use it to locate troops. The military have their own GPS service although in the first gulf war some allied troops were given consumer GPS due to a shortage of the military ones. The US government can turn off consumer GPS in selected areas.

Free Social Networking Sites

I read The Internet for Dummies by John R Levine et al which is a very good book which I borrowed from the library. I'm going to do a blog on it because a lot of the information from the book is already on my blog. However it made an interesting point that a lot of people who are only able to get dial up networking often buy a modem without checking if it's on their motherboard. It's often indicated by a terminal with a telephone connection although you have to be careful you are not connecting the integrated network card which usually has a slightly different connection.

A little while back I did a list of free blogs although some of them were social network sites as well. I thought today I'd do a list of not so well known social network sites a lot of which incorporate free blogging & all of which are free to join.

43things.com

care2.com

ibibo.com

meettheboss.com

mouthshut.com

opendiary.com

qapacity.com

taringa.net

viadeo.com

Blackberry

The book I read to research this post was Blackberry All in One for Dummies by Tim Calabro et al which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. There are 3 major types of blackberry, there's the so called QWERTY with its full keyboard, there's the storm with its touchpad & there's the pearl with its trackpad & relatively small display screen. All blackberries include a flash camera. Out of all the smartphones on the market today the blackberry is the closest thing to a mini computer. RIM which stands for Research in Motion makes the blackberry prior to that they were a wireless internet provider. It's worth noting when 9/11 happened & most forms of communication were down in New York pin to pin messaging on blackberries was still operational. It's well worth accessing social networking sites like twitter & facebook on your blackberry. There's often a need for a dedicated app for this purpose & also you get charged by your internet provider for access. A bit of advice set up your social networking account on a computer, often a lot of typing is involved. A new type of social networking involves giving your location & being able to choose nearby places to visit. An example of this is four square. Many companies especially restaurants & shops are trying to market themselves on sites like this.

Office 365

The book I read to research this post was Office 365 for Dummies by Ken Withee et al  which is a very good book which I borrowed from the library. Office 365 is a cloud computing service which means the processing is done on a server at the other end of the internet & the software is accessed via the internet. Microsoft has data centers for this purpose in Ireland, Singapore & the United States. They have invested billions in these data centers. Pixar the animation company saves a fortune by rendering its cartoons by a cloud computing service, they merely pay for the service not how many processors they are using up. As a result they have reduced how much hardware they have to buy. Office 365 includes office professional plus, forefront for anti virus needs, sharepoint & exchange servers for distributing communications, lync which allows virtual meetings & infopath which allows several users access to the same core information. The prices for this service start at £4 or $10 although for that you only get the basic package. Microsoft has coordinated office 365 to work with smartphones especially windows phones. Google docs although the basic package is free doesn't work as well with smartphones. In effect when you are working with office 365 you are working with your very own password protected website. Also if your company has a sharepoint site this works very well with it. You can use office 2010 or 2007 with service pack 2 as a client. Microsoft does a version of SQL Server as a cloud computer service called Microsoft Azure which also includes 25 GB of space. Microsoft also operates Skydrive which is free to anyone with a windows live or hotmail account & that gives you 25 GB of space.

GIS

The book I read to research this post was GIS for Dummies by Michael N DeMers which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. GIS stands for geographic information system & is a form of software that represents various data in map form. GIS can be used by the emergency services, the military or by practically any kind of company although many individuals also use it. Almost anything that exists has a map somewhere that details its distribution. The software used in the examples in this book is mostly ArcGIS by ESRI & I looked on their website to see how much it is. The personal edition is $100 but also I noticed they have a cloud or online version which also gives you 2 GB of storage & is free for individuals to use. I haven't signed up yet but I'm going to because I think that's good value. The current version of ArcGIS is version 10. GIS software can show cancer hotspots, distribution of different types of buildings or population distribution to name just a few things. It isn't just about GPS which is just one component there are also things like soil sensors, & drum scanners which can read whole maps as well as output devices like printers & plotters, which can plot large portions of a map. GIS software can also show the distance between 2 points & the shortest route. It can display images in either raster type which means it is made up of tiny dots or it can use vector type which means a solid line is calculated mathematically. Rasterized images load up quicker. In addition you can often view things in 3d which is good for taking elevations into account.

Spotify

The book I read to research this post was Spotify for Dummies by Kim Gilmour which is a very good book which I got from my local library. Spotify is a music service whereby music which you can choose is streamed over the internet for you to listen to. It's compatible with android players & ipods or iphones. There's a premium package for £10, an unlimited package for £5 & a free package. The free version only gives 10 hours a month & contains adverts. Spotify use your computer to help distribute the music thus saving on servers & while this shouldn't mean people have access to your data in the wrong hand It could be abused. A few groups like the beatles haven't come on board although their solo work which is quite extensive is available. Spotify has sites in quite a lot of countries & always follows the local laws of that country. It's a swedish company. One of the beauties of spotify is that in addition it's also a kind of social network where you can interact & also share playlists. There's also a lot of plug ins that work with spotify. It contains over 15 million tracks & if you get spotify premium there are often bonus tracks available.

Digital Forensics and Examination

The book I read to research this post was The Handbook of Digital Forensics & Examination by Eoghan Casey et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book covers everything to do with digital forensics from computers to mobile phones. There's even a chapter on computerized air conditioning & heating. In the UK a high profile case that featured digital forensics was the case of Ian Huntley who murdered 2 young girls. He dumped the bodies miles away from his house to make it look like they hadn't been murdered in his house which they had. One of the girls had used her phone in his house which they were able to confirm thanks to her service provider. Also Huntley claimed his girlfriend Maxine Carr had been in the house with him giving him an alibi & they were able to prove she had been several miles away thanks to her mobile phone service provider. Both of them were convicted. The police often use a service provided by Oracle to trace the location of mobile phone users. If you need to make an image of a hard drive the 2 most used programs are encase & FTK imager. Mairex is often used to locate emails on a computer. Often files are copied into SQL Server or Lotus Notes to assemble them although sometimes an excel spreadsheet or windows viewer are used. It depends on the file type. A serial killer nicknamed BTK or bind, torture & kill was found because he sent taunting emails & the location they were sent from was traced to a church. This was a good example of the fact that just because emails are sent from a location doesn't mean the owner of that computer has sent them. Although BTK had access. In another case a paedophile claimed he had downloaded dirty photos of children from the internet but by examining the properties of the photos they were able to prove he had taken them with a camera.

GPS

The book I read to research this post was GPS for Dummies by Joel McNamara which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is primarily for people like hikers & campers & is about personal GPS & also about the various software they can use for map making. At one time it was mostly people like sailors & aircraft pilots who used GPS. In fact the first personal GPS were about a $1,000 & about the size of a brick & very limited on features. Nowadays you can get a GPS for about $100 or £70 & there's even one that's built into a watch. In the book he recommends IrfanView which is free as a photo editor for your maps & it's compatible with google. An interesting development in GPS is geocaching where a parcel is hidden with a rubber stamp so people can prove they found & they hide a gift & when you find it you replace it with another gift preferably of similiar value. The details of where it's hidden are put on a site like www.geocaching.com GPS is important in helping you locate the parcel. In europe they have a GPS satellite system called Galileo which offers unprecedented resolutions although by now it has been surpassed. Even the chinese are on board with it although the americans were unhappy about the prospect of places like the white house being viewed in high resolution although they have negotiated a settlement. The landscape shown on a GPS is divided into degrees then these are divided into minutes which are 1.2 miles then these are divided into seconds which are 0.02 miles. All personal GPS's have a manual in pdf form on the internet. Many come with map making software which is often free versions of commercial ones.

Windows Registry Forensics

The book I read to research this post was Windows Registry Forensics by Harlan Carvey which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Computer forensics is based on the principle that anything you do on a computer leaves a trace & any kind of interaction between your computer & any other computer leaves a trace on your computer & on the other computer. It's just a matter of knowing what to look for. There's an example in the book of someone who used windows washer to purge his files & when he examined the computer there was no NTUSER file so he could see that had happened. Also if you use a program like windows washer they might not be able to find what you have purged but they can see when the program was used which is potential evidence. The author has written an open source program called RegRipper which can be downloaded from www.regripper.net which is written in perl so you have to install perl to use it but it enables you to examine the windows registry. A favourite place to examine is windows explorer. You can identify what software has been on that computer by identifying what file types are present. You can identify if a different drive was used with that computer because the letter for that drive will be on there somewhere also any hardware used with that computer will leave its serial number behind from which it can be identified. A favourite trick of some hackers is to say their computer was hacked by a virus & they didn't knowingly hack another computer. This can be proven one way or the other by checking if they used a program to remotely view the other computer which will leave evidence.

Mobile Device Security

The book I read to research this post was Mobile Device Security for Dummies by Rich Campagna et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. By the way if you are considering buying a smartphone or tablet I have done quite a few posts on the various models on my technology blog at http://scratbagroberts.com
The traditional business smartphone is the blackberry & they would use blackberry enterprise server to connect it to the network. Note it only works with blackberry smartphones. The iPhone is catching up as a potential business smartphone. One good thing about the iPhone & iPad is apple have to approve any potential applications & the only official reseller is the iTunes store. Operating systems like android don't have this approval process & also practically anyone can sell apps. The people who wrote this book work in developing & deploying pulse by juniper networks which I think is a good choice if you're looking for software to help with the security issues of connecting smartphones to a network. Windows phone 7 is aimed at the consumer market & lacks things like VPN which are essential for a business phone although it's particularly easy to use. Ideally only company mobile devices should be used to access the company network. If you are in a job like network administrator you should have a policy that all employees should be aware of detailing what they can & can't do as far as accessing the network. I think it's a good idea to make employees hand in camera phones when they are on the company premises because they can easily photograph what is on a VDU screen & commit espionage & that's a common practise in companies in china.

Free Blogs

I did a search in google & yahoo for free blogs & noticed that some of them were just offering a trial & so I thought I'd do a list of genuinely free ones.

blogger.com

blackplanet.com

xanga.com

blog.com

wordpress.com

storeboard.com

livejournal.com

webnode.com

experienceproject.com

www.dinstudio.co.uk

sofamous.com

buzznet.com

gather.com

migente.com

multiply.com

hyves.nl

splatbiz.com

thoughts.com

del-pros.com

blogster.com

facebook.com

linkedin.com

More Digital Forensics

The book I read to research this post was Digital Forensics for Legal Professionals by Larry Daniel et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. If you find this post interesting you might be interested to know I did a post on cybercrime on my technology blog at http://scratbagroberts.com  a few days ago. Many digital forensics experts are just computer experts which often means computer repairmen & you have to be careful not to be taken in. Digital forensics is very specialized & often experts are in short supply. If a hard drive has to be removed from a computer for examination the digital forensics expert should do it so he can verify it came from that computer. If there's no password on the pc anybody could have gained access to it. An interesting point in this book is that in pornography cases obviously the defendant has to see the pictures & the digital forensics expert has to make a copy of the hard drive to collect evidence but technically both things are illegal. In cases like that they do a minimal number of copies because if they did an excessive amount that would be illegal. If you go to search.org they list information providers for things like ISP's. If you need information from facebook you need the exact account name & in the relatively old days everyone on facebook had a number as part of their account name so you need that. If you're making a copy of a hard drive you need write blocker hardware to preserve the data but if it's a laptop because you may not be able to remove the hard drive you need write blocker software. Also the hard drive has to go in a tamper proof bag. Mobile phones have to go in a faraday bag & when you are examing them they remain in the bag. Locations of mobile phones can be traced by cell towers but the accuracy isn't perfect ie if something blocked the mobile phones signal for a period of time. Also for example in Arizona they don't have daylight saving time which can cause questions about the exact time something. Finally let me say that digital forensics includes things like GPS it isn't just about computing devices. Also more & more court cases are relying on digital forensics.

Cybercrime

The book I read to research this post was Tangled Web by Richard Power which is an excellent book which I bought from a local secondhand bookshop. Cybercriminals often wouldn't dream of robbing someone in person but somehow a computer makes it less personal so they think it's acceptable. Often they assume all computer users are rich after all they can afford a computer & think they are like Robin Hood robbing the rich to feed the poor. It's more like robbing the rich to line their pockets. A lot of these crooks have little computer & use programs they buy on the internet via a search & we call these script kiddies. The more organised ones tend to work in groups, these tend to write all or some of their software. Foreign spy agencies tend to hire the more able hackers to find specific information. When the west bombed Kosovo they uploaded viruses onto the Serbian defence computer network so they didn't shoot down any aircraft. The best way to learn about cybercrime is to browse underground bulletin boards & this is often done by white hat crackers & people who secure networks. Cybercrooks are often called black hat crackers. These crooks are often difficult to stereotype but are often older than the teenage stereotype. In many cases they have good jobs & are in relationships. Often when someone is hacking they use little more than a laptop & a modem & many use the local cybercafe which makes it harder to trace the culprit. While many other types of crime are declining, cybercrime is definalely increasing & many people especially companies don't report it because of potential bad publicity also it's difficult to prosecute.

Cybercrime

The book I read to research this post was Tangled Web by Richard Power which is an excellent book which I bought from a local secondhand bookshop. Cybercriminals often wouldn't dream of robbing someone in person but somehow a computer makes it less personal so they think it's acceptable. Often they assume all computer users are rich after all they can afford a computer & think they are like Robin Hood robbing the rich to feed the poor. It's more like robbing the rich to line their pockets. A lot of these crooks have little computer & use programs they buy on the internet via a search & we call these script kiddies. The more organised ones tend to work in groups, these tend to write all or some of their software. Foreign spy agencies tend to hire the more able hackers to find specific information. When the west bombed Kosovo they uploaded viruses onto the Serbian defence computer network so they didn't shoot down any aircraft. The best way to learn about cybercrime is to browse underground bulletin boards & this is often done by white hat crackers & people who secure networks. Cybercrooks are often called black hat crackers. These crooks are often difficult to stereotype but are often older than the teenage stereotype. In many cases they have good jobs & are in relationships. Often when someone is hacking they use little more than a laptop & a modem & many use the local cybercafe which makes it harder to trace the culprit. While many other types of crime are declining, cybercrime is definalely increasing & many people especially companies don't report it because of potential bad publicity also it's difficult to prosecute.