UK's National Cyber Security Centre gives itself big ol' pat on the back in annual review Despite companies "hanging up" when GCHQ rings them to say they've been hacked (true story), "the UK has avoided a category 1 [infosec incident]", according to National Cyber Security Centre chief Ciaran Martin. NCSC's annual review, the second of its kind and which was issued today, contained few surprises, consisting mostly …
"That's not always easy – we get a lot of people hanging up! They might think it's just someone on the inside or don't realise the seriousness, so sometimes we need to have persuasive skills as well as technical knowledge."
Simple solution, have the company's ISP cut them off and when they ring to complain refer them to the NCSC handler managing their case.
I only have to go onto a search engine like Bing and type "DVLA phone" and get potential phishing websites like https://www.drivinglicenceguide.co.uk/ who also charge 7p a minute whilst I fret about whether they are secretly recording all the personal info including how rich I am when buying a personal number plate. Organised international crime collates data and shares (for a price) just like the 14-Eyes.
Of course DVLA could play a message at the beginning for each of their phone lines, something like "DVLA driving licence department only runs the phone number XYZ and if you have got through to this phone number XYZ by using a different number to hang up and dial XYZ" this way the scammers can be shut off by all but the stupid. The same could be done for all national or local govt phone numbers and any other business that might be handling pertinent information like TalkTalk who still insist they haven't been hacked!
Tip. Use a different email address for every entity you have to give an email address to and watch the spam come rolling in even when you choose to stay off mailing lists. I'm also suspicious of Dell's EMC emailing facility, perhaps there is hardware analysis taking place which makes EMC so effective. YMMV.
"Tip. Use a different email address for every entity you have to give an email address to and watch the spam come rolling in even when you choose to stay off mailing lists."
The sort of hacks that steal data are not the type the NCSC is worried about, it is the hacks which hijack a company's servers and install malware on them that distributes things like child porn that the NCSC is concerned with.
This post has been deleted by its author
Quote: "The organisation, which continues to focus on protecting the public sector from infosec threats, still works with the Five Eyes spy alliance (the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and is still defending critical national infrastructure...."
*
"Infosec threats"....what does this mean? Is this message (see below) a threat?
....or is it about cat videos? I think we should be told!
*
7254E6360714B3126EF6543E2357732C82D48488
7076E0647E66C032502929A4B725AD1FC4C1569C
0D5091FB56725AE6325C3B7C72A3B60C17418B05
1065C1D4410D1F21FF5D303BE0BDFA69A2159C80
60E9C62C1F02F486B95470B8B24D03494A167D31
212684BD526B0C919E6B1C3ED684E417D820BC5F
25E6F7489154F4C607936FD67374C2083E94F929
02545436C8746C96AE7003526137D34B95F366E9
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
