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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.
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
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
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! :)