Interesting Facts

Facebook, PayPal, and Google have reward programs for advising them of bugs in their systems. (The bug has to be a potential security vulnerability, but the rewards can be substantial. Facebook pays a minimum of $500 for qualifying bugs, while Google pays from $100 up to $20,000! PayPal is coy about what it pays. Microsoft, encourages people to report bugs, but it doesn't fork out any money at all. Instead they "acknowledge" the person who reports it. I guess that's how Bill got to be so rich.)

According to a study by IronPort, 80% of e-mail spam is sent by Zombie PCs. (A zombie computer, or zombie, is a computer attached to the Internet that has been compromised by a hacker, computer virus, or trojan horse. Not a computer that wonders around the streets going "Ooh! Aaah!")

According to security firm Symantec, there are now over one million worms and trojans in circulation. (Viruses, Trojans and Worms, Oh my!)

Qwerty is one of the most-popular passwords. (Not very imaginative is it?)

The UK civil service lost 25 million child benefit records. A Junior official from HMRC in Washington, Tyne and Wear, sends two CDs containing password-protected records to audit office in London through courier TNT, neither recorded nor registered. It goes missing. So what do they do? They send another one! However the public is not told that their bank details, national insurance numbers, addresses and date of birth have been "mislaid" until 21st November. Now that's a scandal.