A 13 year old in Ohio is the Al Capone of kids. He’s been charged with 128 crimes including witness intimidation!

Now, with this kind of record, and at this age, nothing could make me believe this kid will ever turn his life around. In ancient societies he would have been executed long ago but in our kindler, gentler more “civilized” society he’ll be allowed to continue to prey on innocents until he’s at least 15 or 16.

Anyway, the greatest quote from the video comes from Beverly Hills psychologist Dr. Carole Lieberman who says:

If Andrew were to get intensive treatment including psychotheraphy and medication he could be saved, but realistically I don’t think that will happen.

This kid is going to jail, and then he’s going to hell.

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That’s right. I hate to tell you folks, but if you give me 10 seconds alone with your computer I’ll not only get your user name and passwords to every mail box you have set up in Outlook and Outlook Express, but I’ll also be able to see every single login you have saved in your Internet Explorer auto-complete settings.

And I’ll do it all with this tiny little application. Don’t believe it? Fine, download it, unzip it and launch it. You’ll be instantly staring at all of the passwords you’ve ever told Microsoft to remember for you.
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If you invited me to try and crack your password, you know the one that you use over and over for like every web page you visit, how many guesses would it take before I got it?

Let’s see… here is my top 10 list. I can obtain most of this information much easier than you think, then I might just be able to get into your e-mail, computer, or online banking. After all, if I get into one I’ll probably get into all of them.

1. Your partner, child, or pet’s name, possibly followed by a 0 or 1 (because they’re always making you use a number, aren’t they?)
2. The last 4 digits of your social security number.
3. 123 or 1234 or 123456.
4. “password”
5. Your city, or college, football team name.
6. Date of birth - yours, your partner’s or your child’s.
7. “god”
8. “letmein”
9. “money”
10. “love”

Statistically speaking that should probably cover about 20% of you. But don’t worry. If I didn’t get it yet it will probably only take a few more minutes before I do…
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As a follow up to my previous post regarding the manufacture of cocaine, I came across the attached image documenting the process of transforming normal cocaine to crack cocaine.

I actually struggled with myself as to whether or not to actually share this information, but ultimately I decided to post it for the following reasons:

• The criminals already know how to make crack cocaine. It is only the law abiding citizens that wonder what it is.
• The manufacture of crack requires that one already possess cocaine. These instructions won’t hurt anyone that doesn’t already have a serious issue on their hands.
• The information already exists on the Internet.

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I don’t know why Citi doesn’t make a bigger deal about publicizing this feature of their credit cards, but they actually have an excellent security option which helps protect customers making online purchases. They mention it only in one paragraph here.

If you have a Citibank credit card, you can use the Virtual Account Number feature to generate temporary “alias” numbers to give out in place of your actual number. Why would you want to do that? Well, there are lots of reasons… read on and I’ll give you a few.

This is an AWESOME story of a mother not just talking - but actually doing everything she can to ensure that her child turned out right.

Chou Sa-Ngoun was desperate.

Her teenage son was skipping school for weeks at a time, using drugs, getting arrested, staying out all night, hanging out with the wrong kids.

Nothing she did seemed to make any difference. Grounding didn’t work. Neither did yelling, crying, taking away privileges, counseling, switching schools, probation or stints in juvenile hall.
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Damn! This British news video demonstrates yet again evidence of police brutality. They claim that their investigation uncovered abuses at every level of the prison systems, and they present enough evidence in this video that I believe their claim.

This 50 minute program is NOT appropriate for children.
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Damn it! I’ve been preaching this for years but I don’t think many people are listening. Security practices in the Internet era have to change! We are way, way behind the technology available and it’s costing far more not to do anything about it than to fix the problems.

For example, the UK government estimates that ID theft costs the nation £1.7bn every year. Let’s see, that’s 1.7 billion divided by 60 million people or £28 per year, for every man, woman, child, infant, invalid and 90 year old in a nursing home. You could equip every person in the country with a fingerprint reader or secure ID token for a fraction of that cost and practically eliminate this huge - and growing - threat.
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I hate to be the one to continually complain about security, but that doesn’t mean I won’t keep doing it. I would estimate that 95% of people are FAR too lax when it comes to security measures, and that another 4% are just plain old lax.

This latest story focuses on a concept called social engineering as a weak link in the chain (among other issues). Social engineering is the process of causing a security breach through submersive human interaction - in this case fooling bank personnel into believing you are someone you are not.
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This is a fascinating 6 minute video, created by a reporter living in Colombia named Matthew Bristow, documenting the process that cocaine goes through from the point at which it is a plant growing in the ground until it is refined enough to actually use as a drug.

They stop just short of the point that it gets sold to a drug trafficker or guerrilla - who further refine the drug.
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I guess you have to be pretty dumb to break into any store just to steal some smokes and beer, but this guy is on a whole other level of stupidity. Seriously, he must have been drunk or high or something. No one can be this big of a moron!
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The Internet is not a safe place. I’m not talking about your kids, I’m talking about YOU!

Recently my financial institutions have begun implementing “security enhancements” in order to fain compliance with guidelines set by the FFIEC. In a nutshell, the recommendation is as follows:

Using nothing more than a login ID and password to access banking and financial transaction services via the Web is insecure. Instead, financial institutions should turn to multi-factor authentication schemes to ensure client safety.

In order to understand what this means, here is a quick security lesson.
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