SLM Corporation Ednotes 6.05% of 12/15/2026

If you are looking for a discounted bond, look at SLM Corporation 

Ednotes 6.05% of 12/15/2026. The CUSIP of this bond is 

78490FZV4. It pays $60.50 per year in interest, paying $30.25 on

June 15th and Dec. 15th.  It sells for approx. $997.45 per bond and 

gives $1,000 at maturity. The bond at this price gives a Yield to Maturity 

of 6.0859% and a current yield of 6.0655%. That means that this bond

investment will double in 12.5 years.

This bond has a Moody’s Rating of Ba1 and a Standard and Poor’s 

Rating of BBB-. BBB- is the lowest Rating in the investment grade 

area. 

Stephanie Tulloch on a Billboard promoting Central Pennsylvania College 
on Rt. 11/15 in Enola, Pa.

What is SLM Corporation?

Sallie Mae (NASDAQ: SLM) is the nation's No. 1 financial services 

company specializing in education. Celebrating 40 years of making a 

difference, Sallie Mae continues to turn education dreams into reality 

for American families, today serving 25 million customers. With 

products and services that include 529 college savings plans, Upromise 

rewards, scholarship search and planning tools, education loans, 

insurance, and online banking, Sallie Mae offers solutions that help 

families save, plan, and pay for college.

The company helps families save for college through 529 college 

savings plans, through its high-yield savings accounts and CDs, 

and through its Upromise savings program. The company offers 

innovative private student loans that help customers save money 

and offer shorter repayment terms. In addition, Sallie Mae offers 

planning tools and resources to assist students, parents, and guidance 

professionals with the financial aid process.

The company and its subsidiaries manage or service $234 billion in 

education loans and administer $38 billion in 529 college savings plans. 

Members of its Upromise college savings rewards program have 

earned $625 million to help pay for college. Sallie Mae also provides 

financial services to hundreds of college campuses as well as to federal 

and state governments.

Sallie Mae is listed on the Fortune 500 and is one of the Top Innovators 

in IT according to Information Week. The company also has been recognized 

as one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens according to Business Ethics 

magazine and one of the top 30 companies for executive women by the National 

Association of Female Executives. 

While Sallie Mae was originally created in 1972 as a government-sponsored 

entity, the company began privatizing its operations in 1997, a process it 

completed at the end of 2004 when the company terminated its ties to the 

federal government. Today, the company is a publicly held, private sector 

company, governed by a board elected by shareholders. SLM Corporation 

and its subsidiaries, commonly known as Sallie Mae, are not sponsored by 

or agencies of the United States of America.

SLM Corporation from time to time issues medium term notes under its 

medium term note program.Our medium term notes are described in 

three documents: a pricing supplement, a prospectus supplement,

and a prospectus.

The prospectus supplement and prospectus are usually printed together 

and contain general information aboutSLM  medium term notes including 

the possible interest rates, maturity dates, trading information, and other

details.

The terms of each particular issuance of our medium term notes are set 

forth in a pricing supplement forthose notes. Pricing supplements contain 

the amount, maturity date, interest rate, interest payment dates,principal 

repayment dates, and CUSIP numbers for those notes.

Occasionally SLM issue a Preliminary pricing supplement for new offerings 

of SLM medium term notes.

The senior notes issued by SLM Corporation, are described in their 

combined Offering Documents/Prospectus Supplements. 

https://www.salliemae.com/about/investors/slmcorp/

Part 4: Fighting Cyber Crime

In the past three parts of this Cyber Crime series, you should have gotten the impression that Cyber Crime is unstoppable. It may be unstoppable for now. However, from the United Nations down to individual companies, organizations are becoming aware of the problem and have started dealing with it. Some individuals will attack corporate computers just to make a name for the Cyber Criminals.

This is the continuous war that the United States and western countries are fighting. Click on the link below and see what the FBI has to say about this war.


http://www.fbi.gov/news/videos/fbis-top-cyber-official-discusses-threat

In the past, in the physical world when somebody would rob a bank, the pool of suspects is limited to the number of people in the general vicinity of that bank.

Today when a bank is robbed digitally, virtually, although it is very real for the victims, the money is actually gone; the pool of suspects is limited to the number of people on the face of the earth that have a laptop and an Internet connection, because anybody with an Internet connection potentially can attack any other computer that’s tied to the network. So the barrier of entry is relatively low.

I think that going forward, this is not going away. I mean, we are not backing away from the Internet. We are not going to change technology.

As technology increases, this challenge becomes greater so when I started the threat was really to networks—mostly corporate networks—but since that time we moved into laptops and wireless laptops and then more recently into personal devices, whether it be smart phones, blackberries—those sorts are devices that allow access to the network anytime, everywhere.


In one case, a Cyber Criminal just wanted a job and attacked a large corporation to prove that he was good at his profession. He contacted top management and threatened to change the figures in the Annual Report and threaten to publish it, if he was not given a job. The company contacted the FBI and the FBI sent him an email application for a job in the company. The Cyber Criminal filled it out and sent it in. The next step, the FBI showed up at his front door and insisted on giving him a ride to jail.

Corporations are secretly setting up data bases of people who they tracked, attacking corporate and government computers. They are put on a Black listed data base and they will never get a job in a major corporation in their life time.      

Here are three articles about Cyber Crime:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-online-mafia-6155986.html

The online mafia 

Cyber gangsters are using computer networks to blackmail businesses - and they could be making you an unwitting accomplice 

http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2011/10/28/from-streets-to-cyberspace-us-gangs-turn-to-white-collar-crime/

From the Streets to Cyberspace: U.S. Gangs Turn to White-Collar Crime

When is credit-card theft a good thing? When the culprits might otherwise be killing you.

http://topnews.us/content/227137-cyber-crime-growing-problem-society

Cyber Crime—A Growing Problem in our Society

Part 3: Dealing with Cyber-gangsters

The Cyber-gangster

I have had to deal with drug dealers and drug gangsters most of my life.  They try to get you to take drugs to increase the demand for their product. You can be walking down the street or sitting in your house when the gun fire starts over a drug territory dispute. You can allow someone to get into your car thinking that all you are doing is giving them a ride to their destination just to find them taking drugs in your car. Some of these people will rob you just to satisfy their habit and will not think twice about killing you.

But times have changed. Not only do you have to worry about the drug gangs in the street but you also have to worry about the cyber gangs on the network.  Cyber-gangsters are smart technical people. They make far more than the drug dealers. These people steal millions of peoples identities in a matter of seconds and sell them to other organizations just as fast. The State of Georgia had over one million names, addresses, social security numbers and other information taken from state data bases without the state knowing about it. They had to payout millions of dollars to taxpayers whose information was stolen from the state to fix their credit.

What I am about to tell you, some of you may think that I am making it up. Here is a clip from NBC News that will give you a taste of reality!

http://www.freebeerandhotwings.com/b/Cyber-Thieves-Steal-$45-Million-Video/19772798381853576.html


NBC News said, "It's safe to say that bank robberies have changed a bit in the technology age we're living in. Gone are the days of people busting through the front doors of a bank in ski masks with guns, demanding money from tellers. There are no more getaway cars and accomplices. All of that has been replaced with really smart people sitting in front of computers."

"These guys managed to steal $45 million by means that we don't understand, but it's super impressive nonetheless!"

Now let's continue....


Andrew M. Colarik of the USA and Lech J. Janczewski of New Zealand state that, "In the context of information security, terrorists may come in many forms such as politically motivated, anti-government, anti-world trade, and pro-environmental extremists". They further state, "Cyber terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated attacks by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, or individuals against information and computer systems, computer programs, and data that result in violence against non-combatant targets".

Let's add the money-motivated hackers, and you see the picture of the enemy.  The goal of money-motivated hackers is to benefit from money inflow;

• Using cyber espionage

• By acting as a "cyber bully" and demand money by various methods of electronic blackmailing

• By breaking into financial organizations' computer systems and transfer money to offshore accounts

• By stealing credit card account information and reselling it

• With identity theft by using stolen information to transfer money out of the bank accounts or to buy the goods from the Internet-based stores with newly opened credit cards

• By writing the software to attack victim’s computers and sell the right to use it.

According to a new study from McAfee, data theft and breaches from cyber crime may have cost businesses last year as much as $1trillion globally in lost intellectual property and resources for repairing the damage.

The goal of cyber-terrorists is to intimidate or force a government or its people to perform the changes that serve attacker's political and social objectives or political motivation. The goal also can be described as a disruption of major infrastructures of the country (e.g. nuclear plants, energy supply systems, defense infrastructure, and similar) in order to gain quick advantage in the pre-planned geo-political action.

State, national, and international political views have various forms and can be the main motivational factor to be engaged in unlawful attacks or threats of attacks against computers, networks, and the information infrastructure.

Neither definition-based anti-virus nor any other single solution is enough to block modern threats. Zero-day attacks, "mutating" viruses, or targeted attacks are all high-risk situations requiring an additional layer of protection. Our widely accepted security standards do not meet the needs either. In fact, the PCI standard for financial institutions and 3^rd-party vendors involved into financial transactions that is considered pretty tough proved to be inefficient. The cyber-gangsters using the sophisticated sniffer software were able to penetrate into Heartland Payment System AFTER they passed their PCI DSS audit. The result of the breach and lost data for the company was disastrous.

Let's look at a short list of "weapons" that are used by cyber-gangsters against personal computer and computer network;

-         Zero-day attacks

-         "Mutating" viruses

-         Targeted attacks (DDoS) utilizing botnets

-         Application exploits (including SQL injection) due to OS and applications design problems

-         Cross-Site scripting

-         Social Networking site exploits

-         Browser exploits

-         Hosted site exploits

-         P-2-P networking infection

-         Smartphone attacks

-         Wi-Fi protocol weaknesses exploits

-         Social Engineering to collect the information for the following attack

-         Malicious e-mails and spam - based infections

-         Creating malicious underground organizations to assist in cyber exploits and attacks

-         Identity theft (which has also been linked to terrorist activity)

-         Keyloggers, mouse-loggers, etc

-         Rogue Blogs pollution

-         Search engine results manipulation to redirect user to malicious web sites

-         Two-factor authentication circumvention

Facebook

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/facebook-password-reset-spam-is-bredolab-botnet-attack/4724

Your cell phone is a doorway for cyber-gangsters to steal your stuff. 

Cell Phone Attacks

People have been trying to give me a smart phone as a gift for some time. I refuse to have one. They are so easy to hack into and take over by criminals. Once they get into your phone it is just a few steps to get into other accounts.  Then you will notice new unauthorized bills coming in, money withdrawn from bank accounts, and unauthorized use of your phone.

The attacks on Smartphones will increase in volume. They have already started. The first iPhone was Worm Detected in November, 2009. Users, who have not changed their default Secure Shell (SSH) login password and have “jailbroken” their iPhones to allow third-party applications to run, are vulnerable to the malware. More and more hacking becomes associated with a "ransomware": iHacked: jailbroken iPhones compromised, $5 ransom demanded, New LoroBot ransomware encrypts files, demands $100 for decryption. Once malware-proof, Smartphones actually have enough security holes to be vulnerable to various hacking attacks. I am not surprised that most of the attacks target the most popular iPhone: Second iPhone worm behaves like botnet. It has been identified by security vendor F-Secure, which claims the new worm has botnet capability and is more threatening than its predecessor. SpyPhone “appharvests” personal data from stock iPhones.

Definitions

I have given you a lot of information here. Let’s look at a few definitions that you may not know.

A botnet is a collection of internet-connected programs communicating with other similar programs in order to perform tasks. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an IRC channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in DDoS attacks. The word botnet stems from the two words robot and network.

     

In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the efforts of one or more people to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet.

Part 2: Corporate Attacks Cost You Money

So you want to shop online and you think nothing will happen to you!

This is part 2 of a four part series.

So just because you have the big dog in your house and an automatic M16 beside your bedroom door plus that high cost home security system, you think that you can’t get robbed? Well what about your home computer?   

Security Management Software for networks is different for all kinds of situations. A small home or an office would only require basic security while large businesses will require high maintenance and advanced software and hardware to prevent malicious attacks from hacking and spamming. You can have the best Security Management Software on your home computer and still get robbed. Criminals may hack your bank account and transfer all your money while you are sleeping. They may go into your brokerage account and sell all your securities just because they can. They may steal your identity and open accounts in your name. 

More than 50% of the employees working for corporations in China believe that they own the software and data that they produce. That is why a great deal of data and software leave the Chinese work place. Some of that data has your name on it.

How? 

Because the government agencies, banks, lenders, or stores that you have shopping relations with will not protect their information like they should. Quite simply, they may not want to spend the money to protect you and them from cyber-attack. 

Do you know that; 

• 70% of all executives have a lack of confidence in their computer security,

• 70% of web sites have security flaws,

• More than 80% of organizations perceive that 85% of disgruntled employees and contractors as a likely source of attack of their computer systems, and more than 70% saw hackers as a likely source.

•  Corporate competitors and foreign governments are not perceived as a likely source of attack.

• There are over 100,000 known computer viruses.  As many as 60% of major US corporations have experienced a virus attack or computer break-in.

• Over 58% of companies have detected outsiders trying to gain computer access.

• 30% of companies don't know if there have been attempts from outsiders to gain computer access.

• Security breaches are created by criminals passing out computer games to unsuspecting users. 23% of PC game playing is done at the office rather than at home.

• Over 90% of Fortune 500 networks have been hacked.

• Client information is the number one theft from company computers.

• 60% of computer abuse is caused by insiders. 85% of computer break-ins occur internally. Insiders still remain as the most serious threat to intellectual property.

• 25% of all organizations reported attempted break-ins via the Internet. An FBI survey of 400 companies showed that only 40% reported Internet break-ins. One out of 5 Internet sites has suffered a security breach. (Reported by CSI)

• Only 17% of companies whose computers were hacked report them to law enforcement. Fear of negative publicity was a key reason organizations did not report them.

• The penetration of information and communications systems is the fastest growing emerging threat.

• Only 54% of Information Technology companies have a security policy. 62% of companies have no security policy for reporting information loss.

• 33% of companies have no mandatory warning banner putting users on notice to be monitored online. 63% of companies with banners do not enforce it.

Knowing these numbers, top managers of corporations and governments will not spend the money to protect their information assets until information starts walking out the door and it starts crippling the company. This is how you the taxpayer and consumer gets hurt in this game of cyber-attacks. 

If I was a young man again, I would go to school to become a Cyber Security Expert. That is where the future jobs are and the money!  

*****

This is the end of the fourth month of 2013 and the DOW is still beating my portfolio in the area of total value. The DOW is closed up 13.25% on April 30, 2013 while my bond portfolio closed up only 6.657%. It appears that the DOW is in at least a short term Bull Market.