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.