Vetting vendors via VoIP

Who among us hasn’t set up a new and unique email account for a particular commercial transaction just so we’ll know who to blame when the account gets flooded with spam? Well, a member of Reddit’s community devoted to systems administration (r/sysadmin) says he took the tactic a step further … actually, 12 steps further.

From a post headlined: “How to get blacklisted as a vendor.”

Yesterday I was hunting for a new vendor. Mostly out of curiosity (but also to help me in picking a company that’s not completely sleazy) I set up a batch of temporary phone numbers in our VoIP system, 12 in all, and called each vendor from a different number.

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Network World Paul McNamara

North Korea engaging in psychological cyber warfare against South – UPI.com


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LinkedIn data breach still an issue – Network World


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“data breach” – Google News

University pays almost $16,000 to recover crucial data held hostage

Canada’s University of Calgary paid almost $ 16,000 ($ 20,000 Canadian, ~£10,800) to recover crucial data that has been held hostage for more than a week by crypto ransomware attackers.

The ransom was disclosed on Wednesday morning in a statement issued by University of Calgary officials. It said university IT personnel had made progress in isolating the unnamed ransomware infection and restoring affected parts of the university network. It went on to warn that there’s no guarantee paying the controversial ransom will lead to the lost data being recovered.

“Ransomware attacks and the payment of ransoms are becoming increasingly common around the world,” Wednesday’s statement read. “The university is now in the process of assessing and evaluating the decryption keys. The actual process of decryption is time-consuming and must be performed with care. It is important to note that decryption keys do not automatically restore all systems or guarantee the recovery of all data. A great deal of work is still required by IT to ensure all affected systems are operational again, and this process will take time.”

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Technology Lab – Ars Technica