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Spammers Announce World War III
schliz writes with the stub of a disheartening article at IT News: "Hackers are deluging web users with malware-laden spam claiming that World War III has started following a US invasion of Iran. Security experts warned [yesterday] that spam emails with subject lines including 'Third World War has begun,' '20000 US Soldiers in Iran,' and 'US Army crossed Iran's borders' have been intercepted. The emails contain links to a malicious webpage that displays what appears to be a video player showing the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion."
I wonder what the possible effects of a coordinated disinformation attack of such nature would be, if it managed to deliver said news to a large segment of the world's population (that have access to email). If such an act was coupled with a successful hacking operation on even one of the major news network's websites, serious consequences may erupt.
Doesn't spam generally imply that something is being sold? Granted, this unsolicited email could be a way for the spammers to recruit systems to their bot-nets to push out more spam, but there's no indication in the summary that there is any actual attempt to sell something here.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
this is is particularly eye catching, given current work events. Since it is different, many people will click on it anyways.
I know some people who I will be sending an email to about this story so they don't click on it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
On a serious note i saw a cool article at physorg yesterday about speculation in the oil market. From the article it would appear there is a major oil bubble about to burst. Though I'm certainly no expert in the matter.
I suspect they just figured a way around some spam filters for a little while. Most anything novel should get by for a while, once it starts getting flagged it should dissipate.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
I started up a twitter account for some of the weirder ones I got: http://twitter.com/spamtitles
World War III is just not going to happen anytime soon, at least a non-nuclear war. If it is nuclear than everyone is fucked everywhere and it's a moot point. We may go in and destroy Iran, but that is hardly going to escalate into WWIII. Just look at the countries and continents involved.
Antarctica and the Artic: Hmmmm, last the checked the Intuit peoples and the Penguins did not have some sort of secret alliance and hidden military. Probably not a player in WWIII.
Australia: Kind of remote. Might contribute troops but hardly the location for WWIII or the political force to cause it either.
Greenland: Too busy with awesome blond chicks, high tech data centers, and hot spas. Not interested in causing it and no one is interested in attacking it.
North America - Canada: Highly doubtful. If anything, they will be an innocent bystander that gets hurt when the US gets attacked. Won't start WWIII either.
North America - United States: Oh, the US will be involved. Bet your ass on that. Could start it too most likely if we have another idiot child president. Will it host the war on its own continent? Probably not. Getting troops and equipment to the US is a heck of a lot harder than Red Dawn made it out to be. Candidate for World War III.
North America - Mexico: They have problems of their own right now with the drug cartels and political scandals. Don't have anything military wise capable of waging a strategic war away from their own continent. No one is interested in attacking them, and they don't seem to be interested in attacking anyone else either.
South America - All: Way to involved in their own affairs and completely lack any military infrastructure capable of operations away from their home soil. Other than having a country with a president that likes to verbally attack the US, not much to see here. Who wants to invade and attack them? I dunno either.
Europe: Look at the countries that make up the EU. They don't want to start anything anywhere. They are far more diplomatic about dealing with the middle east than the US is. I doubt they will be invaded and I don't see them causing World War III either. Took a major chill pill after World War II. They are on break, and don't even get me started on the French.
Eastern Europe: Still getting on their feet IMO. Lack the resources or the will to put up much of fight for anything. I know there are some tensions between some east european countries and Russia regarding missile defense, but not very likely to start World War III.
Japan: Too busy making and selling entertainment equipment, cars, and used womens panties. They figured out the best way to wage war was with skyscrapers and advanced technology in products. Next.
Africa: Yeah, right. They are too busy being butt raped for resources by the rest of the world and dealing with chronic disease and gang rapes of women. Next.
South East Asia: Not very likely. I can't see any country being invaded or doing the invading.
North Korea: Will launch a single attack and promptly be totally destroyed within days. Everybody will ignore the rotting corpse and nobody will come to their aid, certainly not China. China would only object if there was a nuclear response to North Korea which is not totally necessary.
India: More interesting. If anything happens they might take the opportunity to attack Pakistan since they just love each other.
Russia: Who are they going to fight? US? China? Not until resources become absolutely critical. We got the missile defense deal going, which does remind me of the Cuban Missile crisis, but actuall
This isn't new or interesting -- it's a classic pump and dump, most likely on the price of oil.
(1) Buy oil futures
(2) Pump spam/disinformation about a US military strike in Iran.
(2a) Do this when US/Israeli officials are making strong statements
(2b) because Iran has just tested some missiles
(3) Watch the price of oil go up 4-5% in a day http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/
(4) (Sell your oil futures at a) Profit!
Yawn . . .
The most invoative one I saw slip by my filter recently was:
Increase the effectiveness of your copulation organ
I found this troubling in that the only word I could safely blacklist on our corporate mail filters is probably
copulation
I can't imagine anyone except maybe the HR department needing to send work related message with that word in the subject, and even then I can't imagine it would be hit our public MX.
If copulation could be eliminated then blocking a spam like this will only be possible via the statistical analysis of the entire message; sure this entire specific subject might be filterable but not the individual words.
Unless something is a miss in the headers its going to get by.
It made me wonder if the doom and gloom folks might be correct in that SPAM will make traditional mail realy useless. Sadly SPF and related methods are not an option as we just can't count on our customers to implement it and risk not being about to exchange mail with them. Sure if a problem is discovered whitelists can be used but by then you may have lost an account.
The other interesting thing is that would anyone educated enough to have the vocabulary to required understand that subject be ignorant enough to respond? I know the economics of SPAM are such that even if 1 in a million people bite, its worth it but as that first number approches 0 its gotta stop being worth while somewhere.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Look at the countries that make up the EU. They don't want to start anything anywhere. They are far more diplomatic about dealing with the middle east than the US is. I doubt they will be invaded and I don't see them causing World War III either. Took a major chill pill after World War II. They are on break, and don't even get me started on the French.
More like they were castrated after WW/II by American Troops being stationed throughout Europe to prevent them from starting yet another war. There is no question WW/III would have happened if the United States hadn't taken over nearly all the military operations in Europe.
They are diplomatic because that's all the power they have at this point. This is a double-edged sword; Europe is now nearly powerless to start another war, but they're also close to useless when it comes to helping out when military action is really needed.
(Some younger Europeans will probably be peeved about this post, but they really need to read their own unbelievably bloodthirsty history)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
There is no question WW/III would have happened if the United States hadn't taken over nearly all the military operations in Europe.
"No question"? Really? [citation needed].
Perhaps you're thinking about the Morgenthau Plan, which was a primarily economic effort (which only lasted a few years) to "industrially disarm" Germany.
To the best of my knowledge, the primary reason for the stationing of US troops in Europe was to expand the US sphere of influence here (yes, I'm European) as a bulwark against the Soviets -- with whom relations were already beginning to deteriorate at the close of the war.
And no, I can't be bothered to dig up references for that, which I suppose makes me a hypocrite but hey, technically I should be working! :)