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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony @ Equity Investigations, Dear Anthony, -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StockDung who wrote (67967)	3/7/2001 11:30:07 PM
From: Tim Luke	Respond to of 122087

Amazon, despite denials, was warned about hack By: Thomas C Greene in Washington Posted: 07/03/2001 at 08:55 GMT A humiliating hack which resulted in four months of continuous credit-card data vulnerability for Amazon subsidiary Bibliofind, originally broken by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, appears to involve fraud on more than one level. Intruders downloaded the company's customer records, including their credit card details, names and addresses, over a four-month period during which Bibliofind claims, incredibly, that it remained ignorant of any wrongdoing. "We have no information at this time to suggest that customers' credit cards have been misused," company spinmeister Jim Courtovich is quoted as saying. The Register has reason to believe that Courtovich's statement, while painfully predictable, is misleading. At least one merchant known to us experienced "a spate of credit-card fraud starting late last year," at just the time when Bibliofind's security breach began. Items of between $1200-$2000 in value were bought with valid US credit cards and ordered "to be shipped mostly to eastern-European destinations." Our sources, who requested that their identity be withheld, explained that their operations manager "got suspicious and phoned the cardholders concerned, who confirmed that they'd not placed any orders." "We asked them if they shopped on-line anywhere else, as we suspected someone's database had been hacked. The only common link was Bibliofind," the source told us. No good deed goes unpunished The merchant dutifully contacted both Bibliofind and Amazon to warn them that they had trouble, and perhaps vainly hoping get a 'thank-you' in reply. "The Bibliofind sysadmin seemed quite interested and mentioned that there was a possible security weakness within the system used by vendors to log in, although he understandably didn't give details," a second source continues. So far so good, but "I then spoke with an Amazon sysadmin and the Amazon fraud department manager. I forwarded the details that I had collated and expected them to quietly close the hole." "I was a bit put out to get an aggravated phone call from Amazon a few weeks later threatening legal action because I had discussed the [situation] with the card holders I had contacted. They insisted that there was no evidence that their site had been broken." So much for one's good deed of the day. "I muttered a few appropriate words and left it at that," the disgusted merchant says. "They had been made aware of this months ago, but have done absolutely nothing. We still get fraudulent orders, quite possibly from the same database," he added. Lies, damned lies, and statistics So how shall we reconcile Jim Courtovich's bold assertion that the company has "no information at this time to suggest that customers' credit cards have been misused," with what we've just learned? Is this pure ignorance? Or a bald-faced lie? Or Clintonesque hair-splitting akin to discriminating what the meaning of is is? We'll take option three. We don't think Courtovich is an imbecile; and we rather expect he has better sense than to lie outright to the press, who make it their habit to test relentlessly the self-serving pronouncements of little PR bunnies like himself. But if we assume that the information supplied to Amazon and Bibliofind by our merchant has since been discarded, then "we have no information at this time" becomes a quite true, if patently misleading, statement of which Slick Willie himself would no doubt be proud.

To: StockDung who wrote (67967)	3/8/2001 12:55:24 AM
From: superfiggpart2	Respond to of 122087

truthseeker that is one funny article classic line "PERsisT ME TO introduce yuou you to FBN Asociates, The second largest Year 20000 Soulituion Comapy in Sedona Arizina EARTh!!!!!!! NO BILLETIN BOARD CARP HERE, these guys REPORT THERE NUMBERS!!!!!! To somboedy I think anyWAY! Ticke r symbol is FBNA and the warrnats are FBNAW I think you will have TO DO YOUR OWN DO Dilighensce. Lets look at SOME NUMBERS!!!!!!!!!!! 45987 345 455 4 345234 68 3 24578 92573568 59 835688 2 2346 35 370898 30 7796947 430 0885 8654 97564637 75686549769-3997 6597689 796654375 754297846 9-867 7964764 735786978 90876258 23489 678209845 39803473 90384 -2938347 48940203489 9348766 84939-2814 89 191871456791-98456981 184 19847519847-18475-918457 1-90891 4985749861 498576139134857 " --i was laughing my ass off