Provided by CommunityDNS, the information in this post consists of news items in the security-based Internet community.

World Bank to invest $215 million in African internet

While being the world’s fastest growing telecommunications market, broadband expansion has been met with pricey international bandwidth and erratic national infrastructure.

The bank’s investment will work to bring a low-cost, high-speed backbone to central Africa. Western and eastern Africa are already served by undersea cables. 10 more undersea cables are under construction or in planning. It is expected that within 5 years Africa’s broadband market will reach 12.7 million users, up from 2007’s figure of 2.7 million.

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Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! all hit by webmail phishing scam

After a list of 30,000 usernames and passwords of Gmail, Comcast and Earthlink users was posted on the Internet, hackers unleashed their latest phishing attack; an attack which redirected users to a fake page asking them to log in again, thus taking their username and passwords. The latest attack focused on Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! and Microsoft’s HotMail. 10,000 HotMail usernames and passwords have been posted online.

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Scareware scams spill onto Skype

Some Skype users have received an “Online Notification” message alerting them to the fact that their respective computers have been compromised and click on a link taking them to a site for more information. The downloaded malware disables all applications with the exception of itself and IE. Only after receiving funds will the disabled applications be reactivated.

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Breach At Pharmaceutical Benefits Company May Have Affected 700,000

Express Scripts, having received a ransom note along with information on 75 clients to prove the 2008 data breach, now believes the list of breached data may consist of 700,000 clients. The information includes Social Security numbers, addresses, dates of birth. In some cases prescription information is also included.

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Bankers Gone Bad: Financial Crisis Making The Threat Worse

Banks wishing not to discuss insider fraud are not aware of the epic problem occurring in today’s financial systems. On a global basis 70% of financial institutions have experienced data theft from one of their employees within the last 12 months. The financial crisis is making things worse. In the US organized crime groups are threatening people who work at the financial institutions to steal the data.

The breakdown of data theft by worker “type” is as follows:

• 70% – Full time employees

• 10% – Part time workers

• 8% – Outsourced workers

• 6% – Temporary workers

• 5% – Off shore employees

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