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David Marcus

David Marcus
Director, Security Research
Dave Marcus currently serves as Director of Security Research for McAfee® Labs, focusing on bringing McAfee’s ...

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McAfee Labs :

McAfee Unveils H*Commerce Web Film Series on Cybercrime

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 at 5:04am by David Marcus
David Marcus

Today we launched a new web film series, entitled “H*Commerce: The Business of Hacking You.” The film series was created to expose cybercrime as a serious and universal threat that can no longer be ignored. Several of our own Avert Labs researchers lent a hand and their big ol’ brains to the project!

The term H*Commerce (or Hacker Commerce) is defined as the business of making money through the illegal use of technology to compromise personal and business data. Starting today, a new episode will be posted every two weeks here until all six episodes have aired.

The project was originally conceived as a series of standalone episodes, each focusing on different aspects of cybercrime: such as phishing, denial-of-service attacks, online scams, bank scraping, and fraudulent emails. As the filmmakers dug deep into the experience of H*Commerce victims, they realized the film’s focus had to be on the complex stories of real people doing normal online things, only to be horribly violated by ruthless cybercriminals.

Seth Gordon, director of films such as the 2008 theatrical release of “Four Christmases,” and the documentary “The King of Kong–A Fistful of Quarters,” was hired to direct “H*Commerce: The Business of Hacking You.” As Gordon began the research phase of the film, he identified an Oregon woman named Janella Spears, who was a victim of one of the largest and most elaborate email scams on record.

Spears’ story of losing more than $440,000, and the dire effects it had on her family and marriage, became the central theme of the film series. Over the course of the filming, Chris Roberts, a third-party cyberforensic expert, was introduced to Ms. Spears to provide advice on how to clean her system, handle the hackers, and help put an end to the cybercrime scams.

Watch, learn, and arm yourself with knowledge. Check it out at Stop H*Commerce.

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Comments (2)

  • Angus S-F May 21, 2009 8:26AM

    Disappointing trailer and first episode, seem to me to be more scare tactics than meat. I hope later episodes include information on how users can harden their systems rather than just ‘scary hackers’ talking about how easy it is to break it to systems configured with no security.

    Reply
  • Disappointed May 21, 2009 1:42AM

    Really? Your going to fearmonger like that in 2009? You should be ashamed of yourselves. The chief beneficiary on insecurity the past fifteen years has been companies such as yourself. It’s why people are migrating to Apple and Ubuntu/Fedora/Suse daily. With Windows2008 and 7 the demand for your products should plummet. You know that hence this lame, sensational nonsense. Lots of flash, zero substance. But then you think all your customers are idiots.

    Your reverand with the blind husband was a nice touch but she did it to herself. It was, what it always is, GREED. She thought she was going to collect a big chunk of that 20mil. The victim of her irresponsibility is her family.

    What she needs, is help from the government via a victims of crime fund. That won’t happen so why doesn’t Mcafee donate a dollar from the sale of each boxed copy you sell of your new version?

    That “forensics” gimp you found, can I get his contact info to send him a razor? He’s all, ‘w00hoo look at me and my point and click hax0ring’. Open shares!!! Family photos!!!.

    Johnny, I tried to write some Perl once but then I almost stroke out is in it. Of course, he’s never one to turn down free publicity.

    What’s up with Jeff Moss’s hair? Looks like pubes.

    Poor John Drapper has dementia.

    Christy acting all helpless yet at Moss’s convention, he runs his mouth like he’s a four star general.

    Josh Davis is pretty cool so +1 on including him.

    The obese women Sluppick is upsetting my tummy. She could use a new monitor.

    Robert’s is redeeming himself by visiting, but am wondering, would he if you weren’t filming? Of course one must ask where the FBI is in all this. I guess 400k isn’t considered real money anymore. Sueing her bank might be an option but then they have no money for an attorney.

    Episode 6 is all about accepting being screwed out of your life savings. What about the grand kid with cancer? What happens when one of them gets sick?

    DO something McaFAIL.

    Reply