Software utilities

Following on from my previous post about hackers, this is more like it. In the US, 38 spammers and hackers were charged on 65 counts this past Monday for taking part in a large scamming ring in which social security numbers, credit card details and other personal information were siphoned off unsuspecting people and financial institutions.

The ring’s base was in Romania, with rackets operating internationally including the United States, Canada, Portugal and Pakistan.

Similar to what hackers got up to in the last post, these hackers were sending emails with attachments which, when opened, downloaded spyware. The spyware would then read personal information and forward it on to a third party.

Another thing they’d apparently do was pretend to be a financial institution such as Wells Fargo, Citibank or Paypal. I’m sure we’ve all had one of those types of spammy emails, haven’t we? Typical scenario: you receive an email telling you that your Paypal account has been suspended and that to reactivate it, you need to click on a link. Now, some people instantly panic and click on the link – some people don’t.

With this one scam racket alone, thousands of Americans and hundreds of financial bodies were targeted. From their Romanian base, credit and debit card details, once obtained, were sent to their US-based scam cell and copied onto magnetic cards which could be used to withdraw funds from poor Mr X’s bank account (whom, I suspect, would be oblivious to what was going on ’til it was too late).

The article I read doesn’t mention how much they scammed off people but with the amount of people that were involved in the operation, it’s bound to be a lot. I mean, why would any of them get involved if there wasn’t the promise of a significant amount of money?

You know those guys that got arrested the other day for breaking into a woman’s apartment and stealing her MacBook (and other stuff)? You know, the ones who got ‘caught on camera’ (quite literally)?

Well, what those guys did seems to pale right into the background when compared to hackers who seem to be capitalising on the recent China disaster.

There’s an email going round the Internet with a Word document attached to it. The body of the email reads:

BEIJING, May 20 (Xinhua) — The death toll from the earthquake in southwest China’s Sichuan Province has risen to 34,074 nationwide as of 2 p.m. Saturday, while 198,347 people were injured, according to the Information Office of the State Council. Pay attention to attachment for more.

Whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHED WORD DOCUMENT as it’s infected with a Trojan virus (MalDoc-Fam Trojan).

Opening the attachment downloads the trojan onto your computer and if you have a vulnerable Windows PC, then you’re kinda f*cked as that’s its favourite food of choice.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first (and it unfortunately won’t be the last) time hackers get up to no good – they did the same thing when the July the 7th bombings happened in London and when Hurricane Katrina came. I bet they’re just rubbing their hands and brains with glee waiting for the next disaster to come hurtling (hurting) along. I wonder what makes someone do something like that – what are they hoping to achieve? To think there are probably circles out there where it’s cool to do stuff like that, where there are rule books and 10-point guidelines to follow to be ‘in with the hacker clique’.

I wish them well.

Really.

Once Karma’s had its wicked way with them, that is.

Aaagh! What is up with Microsoft? Do they perhaps need a technical equivalent of a shrink? No sooner did they withdraw their billion-dollar takeover bid for Yahoo, and now they go ahead and change their minds. On Sunday afternoon, they announced that they’re putting in a fresh bid for Yahoo, but apparently this time, it’s not for all of Yahoo’s assets, just some (whatever that means).

How is Microsoft to be taken seriously with the back-and-forths? I wouldn’t. Especially as they were the ones that pulled out of the negotiating table in the first place.

Maybe it’s best for different parts of Yahoo to be owned by more than one company, anyway. It might be healthier that way. I hear Google are working on a deal with Yahoo (for Yahoo to utilise Google search ads on their network).

In other news, did you know that a fifth of Americans, over 20 million of them, have never used email? Ever?

I find that amazing.

Maybe it’s ignorant of me as I’m so used to using the web / emailing, but I do find the findings intriguing especially coming from a developed country, an apparent super power.

My immediate hunch was that age plays a factor in this. And I was right. According to the survey, half of those surveyed were over 65 years old. Education also comes into play with 56% not having gone beyond high-school level. (It’d be interesting to find out the breakdown of the other 50%.)

There were other findings such as 30% of Americans never having created a document on a computer before.

I expect that a lot of this isn’t necessarily down to age and education. Some people who’ve never touched a computer or have never been online might simply be scared of the unknown.

I’m not sure if this is an anniversary worth commemorating (apart from the a**holes who send it out in the first place), but today is the 30th anniversary of the irritating phenomena that is ‘spam’. Yes, dear readers, break open a bottle of champagne, and munch on copious chunks of cheese, because 30 years ago, on the 3rd of May 1978, the first ever spam was sent out.

On that blessed day of our Lord, a ‘marketing message’ was sent to 400 people via Arpanet (a pre-internet network). Alas, if only 400 was still the magic number. Nowadays, it’s far more common for 400 spam mails to be sent to one person every day. My Yahoo account comes pretty close to half that every day and I know of people who get way more than that.

‘Spam’ was given its name in 1993 by a guy called Joel Furr who worked as an administrator for Usenet. Joel got his idea for the name after watching a Monty Python sketch in which a bunch of Vikings were shouting and chanting ‘Spam, Spam, Spam’ in a restaurant where too much meat was featured on the menu.

(It would be interesting to find out what ‘spam’ was called pre-1993)

Now sent out in their gazillions, 3rd of May 2008 marks the advancement of technology and more technically-sophisticated and persistently-irritating a**holes who either have nothing better to do, or are looking to scam you out of your money. Either way, these are geeks who really should, instead, be working for Microsoft so that the company never comes up with the disgrace that is Windows Vista EVER AGAIN (wishful thinking, I guess).

In any case, spam is unfortunately here to stay for now. I can only hope that in 2038, on the 60th anniversary of the first spam ever sent, that huge strides would have been made to eradicate it.

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