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FBI Cracks "Largest Phishing Case Ever"
nk497 writes "The FBI and Egyptian authorities have arrested 100 people in what they're calling 'the largest international phishing case ever conducted' as part of a wide-scale investigation called Operation Phish Phry. The criminals used phishing to get access to hundreds of bank accounts, stealing $1.5 million. 'This international phishing ring had a significant impact on two banks and caused huge headaches for hundreds, perhaps thousands of bank customers,' said Acting US Attorney George S. Cardona."
....talk about damage control!
Always been more of a sushi guy myself, guess i'll have to wait for operation bonzai.
The one about "Why the FBI Director Doesn't Bank Online"?
Bark less. Wag more.
Seriously.... the FBI would obviously be much more productive
Someone tell the FBI director it's safe for him to log on again.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
They spent 2+ years of US and Egyptian government resources to prosecute 100 people for tricking other people out of 1.5 million dollars. They will spend more resources on each of the 100 peoples' court cases. If their cases hold up in court they will spend more government resources to keep them in jail for up to 20 years each. They didn't state a dollar amount spent on this initiative in TFA, but wouldn't it be more efficient to use that money to educate online banking users on how to avoid phishing scans?
The FBI director actually fell for a previous phishing scam and this was REVENGE!!!
Way to reel 'em in!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Shouldn't this have been handled by the Department of Phisheries?
I think Fried Phish would of been better.
We just wait for the Al Quaida to attack the FBI director and the FBI will finally start to bring them down the next day.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There was a guy arrested in Brazil a couple of years ago that scammed over 10 million dollars.
They spelled phish wrong - they spelled it with an 'F' - that's government for you!
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
CONFIDENTIAL:
Dear Sir,
Good day and compliments. This letter will definitely come to you as a huge surprise, but I implore you to take the time to go through it carefully as the decision you make will go off a long way to determine the future and continued existence of the entire members of my family. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Dr. (Mrs.) Alexandria Massri, the wife of the head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces of Egypt who arrested by FBI on the 8th of October 2009.
My ordeal started immediately after my husband's arrest on the morning of 8th October 2009. FBI is determined to portray all the good work of my husband in a bad light and have gone as far as confiscating all my late husband's assets, properties, freezing our accounts both within and outside Egypt.
My husband has $1.5 Million USD ($1,500,000.00) specially preserved and well packed in trunk boxes of which only my husband and I knew about. It is packed in such a way to forestall just anybody having access to it. It is this sum that I seek your assistance to get out of Egypt as soon as possible before FBI finds out about it and confiscate it just like they have done to all our assets.
I implore you to please give consideration to my predicament and help a woman in need.
May Allah show you mercy as you do so.
Your faithfully, Dr (Mrs.) Alexandria Massri.
I was pretty religious about forwarding all the phishing emails I got purporting to be from Bank of America to BOA's fraud line.
Lately I'm getting swamped by IRS phishes "notice of underreported income" (perhaps 100 of them so far), that I've been sending to the phishing mailbox at irs.gov. Hopefully that'll help close that particular scheme.
How about capital punishment for widespread internet fraud???
I swear I would have never believe that the FBI had it in them to pick a name as cool sounding as "Operation Phish Phry".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Only $1.5 million? Sounds like a small time ring to me. If I were inclined to do so, I could pull that off in two weeks with an organized ring of Cracker Barrel waitresses.
This is not a popular idea and most say it is a fail, but we need to start charging for each email sent, not much, but enough so that zombie box owners will wake up when their next monthly bill arrives. But the email charge must be ultimately paid by the ISPs who are the actual gateways onto the net. This way they too have an incentive to stop the flow of spam. And since the ISP must pay or be disconnected, third-world spam would dry up too. Use the money generated for backbone maintenance/improvement. Flame on.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Sure it was the "largest phishing case ever". Just how long was it again? Some phish story.
Have you learned nothing at your work? The FBI was 'on the case' since 2007, probably outsourced the real work to some poor suckers in IT and just sat on their asses for two years. Until Mueller gave them an angry call why he was still being phished while they were 'fixing the problem'. From that moment they had to produce results fast to please the boss... they probably just arrested the first guys on the watch list compiled in 2007.
...if the offenders are stuffed and mounted. Maybe they can be implated with cheesey electronics and form a choir of Billy Bass!
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
Poor Phish (the band)
Their name is forever ruined.
Found hiding in the closet after director came home early?
...New headline. Bin Laden comes out of the closet! Hee hee.
Ezekiel 23:20
Contrary to popular opinion on Slashdot, I believe the Mueller story was a classic bait to raise interest and to be followed by this real story.
Think about it - mainstream media ignores tech stories or buries them somewhere no one reads them. Meanwhile, stories about people affected by a problem are always given prominence.
Let me put it this way:
1. Put out a sensationalistic story about how no one (not even the head of FBI) is safe from phishing - raise fear, uncertainty and doubt.
2. Get the real story out about FBI catching phishers. The media will link the two, where otherwise the real story would have gone unnoticed.
3. Profit! (Bonuses, awards, whatever)
They let this go on, because they think the cost of ruining a few lives is ok, as long as in the end they make their bust and all is ok in coptown. Problem is , real time transactions are happening while they study the case, and letting 1.5 million slip through in order to follow the trace back to the top. Like a guy holding a camera while someone is being mugged by a lynch mob and doing nothing, should there not also be consequences especially when FEDS (of all people) let something like this happen,
when they have the power to stop it in its tracks....instead of letting it go on, and on, how long was this case going on for...?
Hard decisions, but sometimes the ends do not justify the means.
I had a ticket once for running through a stop sign, although it was covered almost 100% behind a tree, as I mentioned this to the cop, they told me to just say that in court as they knew many people would run through, instead of just telling the city to fix the problem....however I felt very frustrated, should there have been a kid playing nearby and I had not seen the sign, I would have maybe run him over by accident, then the cop would have been responsible for his life being lost, because instead of directing traffic (like when an intersection is burned out) they were using the hidden stop sign to generate revenue....very depressing!
The ultimate credit collection is now for sale. For 10 million dollars ($10,000,000.00), plus $500,000 copying and media fees, you can be the exclusive buyer of this collection. That's right. This is the ULTIMATE credit card number collection. There is no collection any larger. Only ONE copy will be sold to the lucky buyer. This is actually a lower cost than any other offer by any other credit card list provider. This is an amazing 10 million (10,000,000) card numbers per penny ... a total of ten quadrillion credit card numbers. And it can all be exclusively yours if you send the payment within 24 hours.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Are you down with the O.P.P.?
O is for Operation, P is for Phish don't you know, ...
The last P, well that's not so simple bro
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
then take all that cash, and invest it in third world communication infrastructure. that should shut the critics up
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My goodness that is about as dumb as an undercover officer wearing one of those tee-shirts that says "Police" on it! I mean, if I were into malicious computer activity, (disclaimer: I am not involved in malicious computer activity, nor do I condone or recommend it, and know of no one who is, nor have I ever knowingly engaged in it) I sure as heck would not name my activity after what I am doing. Let's call it the "Biggest Worm Ever", think we'll get caught???!!! Dumb, just palin (not a typo) dumb!
It took 2 years to build a case against 100 of these people, and I'd be incredibly surprised if 100 people even amount to 1% of all phishers. I'd say that that the other 99% have pretty much gotten away with it.
almost getting into a car accident and saying "I'll never drive again"...
This may be having an effect. I'm seeing a small decline in major domains being exploited by phishing scams. That monitors phishing attacks which use major domains to give themselves convincing-looking URLs.
In the year and a half we've been monitoring this, the number of sites being exploited has dropped from 174 to today's value of 37. We nag sites that have problems to tighten up their security. It's working. Ebay used to have a security hole which allowed creating URLs under "ebay.com" that redirected elsewhere. That's been fixed. The "short URL" companies are now much more aggressive in detecting phishing and kicking off those URLs. Bugs at Yahoo and Microsoft Live have been fixed. Geocities had problems, but they're shutting down at the end of the month.
Now if Google would just kick off this phony Habbo login page implemented using Google Spreadsheets, all the biggest names would be OK. If anyone from Google is reading this, please pass that along to someone with a clue. (Yes, it's been reported via the usual "Google abuse" mechanism.)
... you should have seen the size of the one that got away!
Have gnu, will travel.
$1.5 million dollars was the largest phishing scam ever? These guys should find a more lucrative scam. Credit/debit card fraud usually nets more than that.