Scammers Riding the Gustav Wave

ruphus13 sends in a sad tale of online scammers hoping to reap rewards from the misery in Gustav's wake. They have been busy registering likely-sounding domains and setting up phishing attacks and other ruses. While not all the domains were malicious in intent, several of them were listed on eBay for sale. Donors beware. From the article: "Nearly 100 domains related to Hurricane Gustav have been registered in the past 48 hours, security experts said Sunday, some of which may be used by bogus charity and relief scams after the storm strikes the US Gulf Coast. According to television station KTAL in Shreveport, LA, the office of Louisiana's Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has warned residents of Gustav phishing attacks already in progress ... numerous domains containing the word 'gustav,' 'charity,' 'hurricane,' and 'relief' had been recently registered."

Comments

I'm sure their motives are pure...

[bigtallmofo]

Just look at this guy:

http://www.computerworld.com/comments/comment/view/9113918/250642

Hi,

I registered the following domains:

gustavcharities.org
gustavcharities.com
gustavcharity.org
gustavcharity.com
gustavdonation.com
gustavdonation.org
gustavdonations.org
gustavfund.org
gustavrelieffund.com

I registered these domains (proactively) to keep them OUT of the scammer's hands.

So, he registers domains like Microsoft registers "defensive" patents. With no motive of profit and solely for the public good. Now if we could only manage to register the infinite remaining possible Gustav domains (ex: gustav-donations.org), we should be all set.

Re:One valid domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple..because the Red Cross is notorious for telling people they have to 'repay' them for monies they give out during disasters.

They're not as Charitable as one might thing.

My dollars will go to the Salvation Army.

Re:AC is dead on the money

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the Whois database, the domain gustavrelief.com is owned by a church in Albany, OR, and this church is also the owner of about 3,400 other domains such as unsafesex,com, tape.info, and pennsylvaniasecretaryofstate.org.

Incidentally, the names of hurricanes are published in advance and it certainly would be possible to grab all the names for potential future disasters well in advance of their actual occurrence. The domain gustavrelief.com was registered in 2006 and only modified on August 30, 2008.

Re:AC is dead on the money

[Anonymous Coward]

As a check to my idea that scammers are already registering names for future hurricanes, the domain dannyrelief.com has been registered to the same church in Alban, OR, that has registered gustavrelief.com (data from Whois). The name "Danny" has been assigned by NOAA to the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season.

The article only mentions the hundreds domains that been registered in the last 48 hours. I wonder how many more have done their shopping early.

Re-evaluate

[bill_mcgonigle]

There are lots of good reasons to hate on Walmart ... They were 50 cents. Two for a buck.

Hrm, seems you've found them to be behaving ethically. Wal*Mart was also the only company with the logistics to get relief supplies in after Katrina (the Southern Baptists being the other bright spot). And they're associated with small business growth.

AFAICT, the good reasons to hate on Wal*Mart are if you're in direct competition with them or are a union organizer. It's true that they source to China for goods, but that's only because our Government has made our goods uncompetitive. If US goods are cheaper they source here.