Computer security firm Symantec yesterday reported that about two-thirds of the world’s Internet users have fallen victim to cybercrime and few think crooks will be caught.
China was tops when it came to online victims, with 83 percent of Internet users there having been hit by computer viruses, identity theft, online credit card fraud or other crimes, a Norton Cybercrime Report said. Brazil and India were tied for second place (76 percent), while the US was third (73 percent).
While victims said they felt furious and cheated, they were reluctant to take action because they felt efforts would be futile, according to a study by Symantec consumer division Norton.
“Cybercriminals purposely steal small amounts to remain undetected, but all of these add up,” said Adam Palmer, Norton lead cyber security advisor. “If you fail to report a loss, you may actually be helping the criminal stay under the radar.”
A tendency by people to accept cybercrime was in part due to “learned helplessness,” according to Joseph LaBrie, an associate professor of psychology at Loyola Marymount University. “It’s like getting ripped off at a garage — if you don’t know enough about cars, you don’t argue with the mechanic. People just accept a situation, even if it feels bad.”
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
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NEW STORM: investigators dubbed the attacks on US telecoms ‘Salt Typhoon,’ after authorities earlier this year disrupted China’s ‘Flax Typhoon’ hacking group Chinese hackers accessed the networks of US broadband providers and obtained information from systems that the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Saturday. The networks of Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies, along with other telecoms, were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter. The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized US requests for communications data, the report said. The hackers had also accessed other tranches of Internet traffic, it said. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
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