Blackhacker

The following showed up in my inbox today. This is a version of what is commonly called the Nigerian Scam. It is called that because most common versions claim to use Nigerian banks. This version apparently to disguise the scam uses a London bank. But the scam details are the same. Somebody has found money in a bank, but can’t access it, and wants to use you to do it. The original scam plays on a person greed and asks the would be mark to pose as next of kin, or something to dupe the government bank officials, into giving you the money. The version attempts to appeal you your compassion, and your greed. Basically if you respond to this con, you will be asked for banking or other sensitive information. And then just steal your money. Beware of such attempts. I have included the entire email including the return email address. Feel free to spam it.

This:
Received: from 80-45-32-86.static.dsl.as9105.com ([80.45.32.86]:55952 helo=FLNET9)

is from the header in the email apparently the fool is using a static IP. Granted this maybe some poor sap whose PC has been compromised. But one quick notification to the ISP will shutdown at least one avenue at his disposal.

But here is what is classic. The idiot signed it. The original text below shows what looks like to me as encrypted text. Being that I don’t have any public keys floating around, and the fact that Gmail was able to show me clear text it must be signed digitally. Still have not figured out where gmail got the public key to convert it to clear text but I’m looking. When I find it I’ll post it here.

Dear Sir/Madam,
I am a staff of Natwest Bank London. I am writing following an opportunity in my office that will be of immense benefit to both of us. In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of $27.5million Dollars (Twenty Seven million five hundred thousand Dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers Late Mr. Morris Thompson an American who unfortunately lost his life in the plane crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 which crashed on January 31 2000, including his wife and only daughter. You shall read more about the crash on visiting this site.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/01/alaska.airlines.list/
http://www.nativefederation.org/history/people/mThompson.html
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin or relatives to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines.

Unfortunately I learnt that his supposed next of kin being his only daughter died along with him in the plane crash leaving nobody with the knowledge of this fund behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery that I and two other officials in this department now decided to make business with you and release the money to you as the next of kin or beneficiary of the funds for safety keeping and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don’t want this money to go back into Government treasury as unclaimed bill. The banking law and guidelines here stipulates that such money remained after five years the money will be transferred into banking treasury as unclaimed funds.
We agreed that 20% of this money will be for you as foreign partner, while the balance will be for me and my colleagues. I will visit your country for the disbursement according to the percentages indicated above once this money gets into your account. Please
be honest to me and my colleagues trust is our watchword in this transaction. Note this transaction is confidential and risk free.

Please note that all necessary arrangement for the smooth release of these funds has been finalised . Please in your response include your telephone number for easy communication between us.

Best Regards,
Esther Parker
eparker1@caramail.com

(more…)

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has launched seven separate lawsuits against internet sites in its latest anti-piracy crackdown. The MPAA claims the targeted sites had been “facilitating the distribution of copyright works”.

The MPAA has commenced legal action against the following BitTorrent tracking sites—isohunt.com, bthub.com and, torrentbox.com who are all owned by the same person; torrentspy.com; niteshadow.com as well as ed2k site ed2k-it.com and, Usenet search engines—nzb-zone.com, binnews.com, and dvdrs.net.
(link)

Wow they are goig after Usenet sites TOO!. Didn’t know that tech was still used in mass. The really interesting thing is that the torrent sites don’t store or distribute ANY thing. They just provide indexing. But of course that defence didn’t save napster. (The origanl real napster, not the wannabe Napster you see now). The ohter interesting thing is that at least one of the site owners does not live in the US, but that may not save him either, most trade treaties require that IP of each others country be honored. We’ll see.

EFF Urges Consumers to Claim Clean CDs and Extra Downloads

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging music fans who purchased Sony BMG music CDs containing flawed digital rights management (DRM) to submit their claims now for clean CDs and extra downloads as part of a class action lawsuit settlement.

“This settlement gives consumers what they thought they were buying in the first place — clean, safe music that will play on their computers and their iPods as well as their stereo systems,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl.

Anyone who purchased Sony BMG CDs that included First4Internet XCP and SunnComm MediaMax software can receive the same music without DRM. Some will also get downloads of other Sony BMG music from several different services, including iTunes. Music fans have through the end of the year to participate in the settlement, and they should receive their compensation within six to eight weeks of submitting their claim forms. Customers can find out more about the settlement and how to submit their claims at http://www.eff.org/sony.
(link)

Scott Adams receivedthis letter in response this strip and displayed it on his blog:

Dear Mr. Adams,

I am writing in regards to the “Dilbert” cartoon that was published in the Gazette-Mail in Charleston, West Virginia on Saturday, February 18th. I have long enjoyed your cartoon strip, having spent eight years at Marshall University confined to a tiny cubicle (even though I was a full professor) and having to track the amount of paper I used due to budget constraints.

I am currently the co-director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia and teach in the Appalachian Studies graduate certificate program at Marshall’s graduate college. One of my interests is the ways in which stereotypes of Appalachians in the general culture have rationalized and justified the historic mistreatment of Appalachians as an ethnic group.

Your cartoon “killed” an inebriated hillbilly. He was lying on a log with a jug at his side (probably moonshine?) and wearing bib overalls. He was booted off the log into a chasm and a certain fate. Now, let me ask you a question. Would you have drawn that cartoon of a drunk Irishman, a Jew, a black person, an Hispanic person? I doubt it very much. Most Americans are by now sensitized to the damage that such stereotypes represent for minority groups. And yet you, as well as many others, still feel free to picture hillbillies (translate: Appalachians) in this way.

True when I saw this yesterday, I laughed. And true, I didn’t think about how this might offend the sensibilities of Appalachians. And I probably should feel more sympathetic. Honestly. I don’t.

I haven’t been a serious comic head for about a decade or so. I peek at some of my old books, the ones they still publish anyway, to see whats happening but I haven’t gotten back into collecting yet.

The marriage of T’Challa and Storm definitly peeks my interest. My first reaction to this was somewhat like that scene from Grand Canyon, where two of the white characters hookup Danny Glover and Alfre Woodard. They are talking and trying to figure out why they thought they might make a good couple. And I think it was Glover’s character who said, “Maybe we are the only two black people they know.” Then had a big laugh.

I’m an X-Men fan almost from the womb. Never been into Black Panther but he had a great mini way back in Marvel Comics Presents. And I understand Reginald Hudlin has done some great things in returning him to his own book. Frankly I never would have put them together. Then again never liked the idea of established prominent characters, especially heroes, getting hitched. It seems cheesy to me, from a story perspective. But I’m willing to be convinced. What is good is that Storm is gonna get a lot of treatment. filling out her origin, which I am WAAAAYYY cool with. It is a shame that we as readers don’t know more about her.

The Dilbert Blog has the funniest post I’ve seen about Dick “Shotgun” Cheney

FuturePundit: BP Proposes Low Carbon Dioxide Electric Plant In California
BP Proposes Low Carbon Dioxide Electric Plant In California

BP and Edison International are proposing construction of a CO2 sequestering electric generation plant that would use petroleum coke left over from refining oil.

CARSON - BP and Edison International said Friday they plan to team up on a $1 billion hydrogen-fueled power plant in southern California.

The plant, near the BP refinery in Carson 20 miles (32 km) south of Los Angeles, would come online by 2011 and generate 500 megawatts of electricity, about enough to power 325,000 homes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the plant would be the first in America to use a new process that uses a chemical process to produce clean-burning hydrogen from petroleum coke, a residue from refining crude oil.

Note that contrary to some news reports this is not a done deal. The costs are higher on this approach and BP wants government subsidies before going ahead with it.

PayPal Prepares
For a Challenge
From Google
By MYLENE MANGALINDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
February 6, 2006; Page B1

When Jeff Jordan learned last May that Web-search leader Google Inc. was building its own Internet-payment service, he reacted swiftly.

Mr. Jordan, who is president of eBay Inc.’s PayPal online-payments unit, immediately asked employees to unearth information about the Google service. Soon, PayPal employees were monitoring blogs, news reports and other data for information about Google’s progress in payments. PayPal staffers even gleaned details about Google’s plans during regular calls to customers who were eager to dish about how Google had reached out to them.
link

It looks like Google is the new Microsoft. The mere mention that they might enter a market sends executives scurrying around like little chipmunks. The difference between Google and Microsoft, is they are competing on the strength of their products, and not an leverage they might have as a monopoly.

Bush Plan Would Cut Survivor Benefits - Yahoo! News

“Children who have lost a parent need every assistance and encouragement we can provide, and everything the federal government can do to encourage them to stay in school and get an education makes it that much more likely that they can succeed,” said Scott Milburn, a spokesman at the Office of Management and Budget.

“Linking benefits to school attendance provides that encouragement and is, in fact, currently the rule for 19-year-olds. We think more children can be helped by lowering that age to 16,” he said.

in other words, a 16 or 17 year old who might drop out of high school to subsidize the family income that was lost when his father or mother died will loose the death benefit that his parent earned for him while he was alive.

Mark Lassiter, a spokesman at the
Social Security Administration, said the benefit “bears no relation to what a person’s funeral expenses are or to any of workers’ earnings levels. We believe that eliminating it is not going to cause an appreciable financial hardship to a survivor.”

In other words, “After paying $5000-$10000 for a funeral what’s a another $255?”

“In the Internet world, both ends essentially pay for access to the Internet system, and so the providers of access get compensated by the users at each end,” said Cerf, who helped develop the Internet’s basic communications protocol. “My big concern is that suddenly access providers want to step in the middle and create a toll road to limit customers’ ability to get access to services of their choice even though they have paid for access to the network in the first place.”
(link)

Even as big teleco try to sell us that THEY are the internet and that we should pay them we must remind tham that they are mearly taxi drivers and as such thier only job is take us where we want to go. Paying extra to be dropped off at Penn Station will not be accepted.