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Homer Simpson and the Kimya Botnet

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the why-you-little dept.

An anonymous reader writes "As all hardcore Simpsons fans know, Chunkylover53@aol.com was revealed to be Homer Simpsons' email address in one particular episode, registered by one of the shows writers, who would reply to fans as Homer himself. After a flood of messages, 'Homer' signed off — seemingly forever. Well in the last few days, security company Facetime Communications reports that anyone who had Homer on their AIM buddy list would have noticed his sudden reappearance. Unfortunately for all, he appears to have been hacked and pushing malware links which deposit those unlucky enough to run the file into a Turkish Botnet. The message claims the file is a 'web exclusive' episode of the TV show — an interesting way of targeting a specific group of fans who would assume Homers return would only coincide with something special like (say) a TV episode just for them. What I want to know is, is Homer smart enough to run an AV scan?"

3 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Ineteresting tactic by notnAP · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Anyone in the printing or marketing industries is familiar with the concept of Variable Data Printing (aka One-to-One Marketing, or any of a number of other marketing buzz words). If you cater the ad/promo/mailing to the recipient, you can send out far fewer pieces to fewer participants, but thanks to higher hit percentage, yield better results.

    I'm sure the number of attempted infections from this attack are very small in the scale of typical virus'. But I would not be surprised if the number of successful infections was pretty high, relatively speaking.

  2. Homer IS "dumb" enough to run an AV scam! by dogberto · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Recall that there was a Simpsons episode where he salvages an auto-caller to run a telemarketing scam on the residents of Springfield.

    Also recall that Homer actually did figure out how to setup a website and post "blogs" in his stint as Mr. X.

    So, all someone has to do is give him a spiel of how a particular program or an infected computer (not known to Homer of course) can provide him with easy money, and he'll be more than happy to distribute that program en masse or very quickly hook up his computer to the internet. :-)

  3. That was episode... by AlgorithMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    S14E08 - The Dad Who Knew Too Little
    (#EABF03 / SI-1403) aired January 12th 2003

    is it a bad sign, that i found it within 1-2 minutes?

    --
    The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes