Wednesday, September 29, 2021

How the Mafia Is Pivoting to Cybercrime

 Bill O’Reilly’s latest book, Killing the Mob: The Fight Against Organized Crime in America.


Saturday’s good reading and listening for the weekend

What people in other forums are saying about public policy 





Companies are hoarding personal data about you - Washington Post – Here’s how to get them to delete it [many caveats here…this may not be possible even in a limited manner] – “Companies are hoarding personal data about you. Here’s how to get them to delete it. Data deletion is complicated, and some companies mishandle requests. But it doesn’t hurt to ask…”



Investigators from Spanish and Italian police explain how organized crime is going online and expanding into cybercrime.


67% of employees ready to quit say leaders made empty pandemic promises for well-beingBecker’s Hospital Review

Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40 Million Conference Call Gone WrongGoldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40 


Muslim Passenger Screaming ‘Allah’ Tries to Storm Cockpit of JetBlue Flight Out of Boston.


Subject: Admin of DDoS service behind 200,000 attacks faces 35 yrs in prison
Source: BleepingComputer
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/admin-of-ddos-service-behind-200-000-attacks-faces-35yrs-in-prison/

At the end of a nine-day trial, a jury in California this week found guilty the administrator of two distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) operations.32-year old Matthew Gatrel of St. Charles, Illinois, ran two websites that allowed paying users to launch more than 200,000 DDoS attacks on targets in both the private and public sector.

Booter service and bulletproof server hosting.


Data BreachesHere are the top 10 worst data breaches you must know in 2021

It’s no surprise that Covid-19 has increased the number of cyber-attacks and data breaches that have been reported throughout the world. The ICCC received almost 800,000 cybercrime reports in 2020, as per the FBI’s 2020 Internet Crime Crime Report, with claimed damages surpassing $4.1 billion.


What is the third place? (pt.1) Patricia Mou:”…Recently I learned that there’s a name for this sacred place: the third space. And it was defined in 1989 by Professor Ray Oldenburg, an American urban sociologist who studied  the importance of informal public gathering places for a functioning civil society.

In this 3-part series, I want to share my thoughts on:

  • Part 1: A definition of third spaces and what they are.
  • Part 2: The state of third spaces in America today.
  • Part 3: The future of third spaces: virtual and physical…”


 Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 25, 2021 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Landlords Use Secret Algorithms to Screen Potential Tenants. Find Out What They’ve Said About You; Even the NSA Agrees: Targeted Ads Are Terrifying; Massive Troll Farms Revealed to Be Operating on Facebook; and Ninth Circuit Says Warrantless Search of Google Files Automatically Reported to Police.