Archive for September, 2011

The Cost of Complacency

September 26th, 2011

There was an interesting blog posting by Paoga’s Graham Sadd recently on the perils of ignoring cyber crime.

For the last four weeks someone based in China has been registering as a buyer on fotoLibra.com.

Not once, but approximately every four minutes throughout the Chinese working day. It seems like a manual attack rather than an automated one, because although the fake addresses are all the same — Cherry Street Room 318 Atlanta Georgia USA 30332, which I think might be a lie — there are occasional spelling mistakes. It’s easy for us to block the attacks. But despite failing every time, they continue to trundle in every four or five minutes.

We hope we’re not complacent about online security. We do what we can to protect ourselves against such attacks, but what we can’t get our heads round is what can they hope to achieve through multiple registrations as a picture buyer on a picture library site?

At the very least they ought to try and buy a picture from us.

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