The sorry thing is that apart from South Africa, law enforcement is useless when it comes to enforcing or even recognising 419 fraud.
Case in point; One of our members had compiled an tracked down a 419 gang operating in the UK. This evidence was taken to the MET who promptly did nothing. The evidence was full correspondence, details of bank accounts owned by the gang, phone numbers, photographs of the gang and their location. And you know what happened, NOTHING!!!
Well, I lie, not exactly nothing, because of the inaction of the MET in acting on the information, this gang managed to extract over 16,000 US dollars out of a victim in Canada.
Now, I don't know about you but something like this really pisses me off and we see it daily, so before you attempt to claim the high moral ground on us take another look at yourself and ask what have I done in the last week to help out others.
We acknowledge that we will never get an arrest over there, but the more scambaiters there are plying their trade in fustrating the scammers.
The most fustrating thing is the fact that the ARE victims. I used to think that people were able to see through the endless emails, but after scambaiting for the last 18 months I am now of the opinion that the majority of the population on this planet ARE stupid enough to fall for scams (I include ALL types of scams here, not limited to 419).
Such as the fact that a server owner may or may not be aware of the content hosted on their customers' web sites until after their box has been flooded off the Internet.
Not quite, the targets are selected AFTER the hosts are notified on the content of the sites and who fail to act on our complaints. Our notifications contain fully presented evidence as to the legitimacy of the site in question. Most often the site breaches the hosts OWN AUP (or similar document). Other evidence presented is how the site is not listed in financial services regulator databases (depending on what claims the site makes in relation to its aparent location on the planet). There are also many, many other things that are used as evidence to the host.
The bandwidth tools like the Lad Vampire and Mugu Maraurder are a the last in a long line of steps we use.
How can there be unintended consequences to other sites on the same server (unless the server admin fuxored up the virtual server config) when the requests from the Mugu Marauder are parsed exactly the same way as a legitimate request for an image.
All the Mugu Maraurder does is download images, therefore increasing the bandwidth used and hopefully maxing out the quota for the site. As a result if a victim of the scam goes there, they might (hopefully) think twice about the scam they are caught up in.
SIGH
This is not targetting phishing.
Gee, I wish some of you would read. This is about Nigerian Scams and Advanced Fee Fraud otherwise known as 419 scams.
call the ISP hosting it and complain to them.
Nice in theory, but there are hosts who after being informed multiple times, and also after having chargebacks because the scammers use bad credit cards to pay for the hosting do nothing.
There are the exceptions, and we have formed very good associations with a number of hosting companies who understand what The Artists Against 419 and our associates from scambaiting forums such as http://www.419eater.com are tirelessly working against.
It is nice to know that the IT industry is full of experts who fail to do the first thing when presented with something new.....
Try researching things guys.
1. The Mugu Marauder operates exactly the same as a web browser repeatedly refreshing with no cache on a specified list of target URL's (normally images because they typically have a large filesize compared to HTML pages).
2. The UID number generated for the application is used to tally stats for individual users, so just drop the paranoia.
3. FFS The sites targetted ARE NOT related in any way to legitimate banks. As I said if you did a little research before sprouting your "me too" crap you might realise just EXACTLY The Artists Against 419 are fighting against.
4. A DoS attack is defined as the act of deliberately trying to make a service on the attacked machine unavailable by flooding it with requests, sometimes using deliberately corrupted data packets. Now, I dont know where you tool come from or whether you sympathize with cyber criminals or are simply too dense to comprehend ths. We are downloading images from *CRIMINAL* fake banks after having tried to contact the hoster and shut down these *CRIMINALS* in vain at least two times or mopre. Then, and then only, do we actually start trying to deliberately exceed the allowed bandwidth of these *CRIMINALS*, so they cant use their bogus banks to prey on unsuspecting victims.
It is *NOT* an attack on the servers, but on the *CRIMINAL* websites only.
Slashdot Mirror
AA419 target Advanced Fee Fraud, otherwise known as 419 or Nigerian email fraud. Nothing else.
Yes, but it won't be the Mugu Marauder.
The original and the best :D
Just to clarify things (again SIGH!) the targets list is defined by The Artists Against 419 and NO-ONE else.
http://www.aa419.org/mm/
Tell me where a "real" site is listed there, each and every URL targetted belongs to the FAKE site.
The sorry thing is that apart from South Africa, law enforcement is useless when it comes to enforcing or even recognising 419 fraud.
Case in point; One of our members had compiled an tracked down a 419 gang operating in the UK. This evidence was taken to the MET who promptly did nothing. The evidence was full correspondence, details of bank accounts owned by the gang, phone numbers, photographs of the gang and their location. And you know what happened, NOTHING!!!
Well, I lie, not exactly nothing, because of the inaction of the MET in acting on the information, this gang managed to extract over 16,000 US dollars out of a victim in Canada.
Now, I don't know about you but something like this really pisses me off and we see it daily, so before you attempt to claim the high moral ground on us take another look at yourself and ask what have I done in the last week to help out others.
The most fustrating thing is the fact that the ARE victims. I used to think that people were able to see through the endless emails, but after scambaiting for the last 18 months I am now of the opinion that the majority of the population on this planet ARE stupid enough to fall for scams (I include ALL types of scams here, not limited to 419).
Perhaps that might be a start for you guys.
So why don't you join in with scambaiters over at 419eater.com
Not quite, the targets are selected AFTER the hosts are notified on the content of the sites and who fail to act on our complaints. Our notifications contain fully presented evidence as to the legitimacy of the site in question. Most often the site breaches the hosts OWN AUP (or similar document). Other evidence presented is how the site is not listed in financial services regulator databases (depending on what claims the site makes in relation to its aparent location on the planet). There are also many, many other things that are used as evidence to the host.
The bandwidth tools like the Lad Vampire and Mugu Maraurder are a the last in a long line of steps we use.
How can there be unintended consequences to other sites on the same server (unless the server admin fuxored up the virtual server config) when the requests from the Mugu Marauder are parsed exactly the same way as a legitimate request for an image.
All the Mugu Maraurder does is download images, therefore increasing the bandwidth used and hopefully maxing out the quota for the site. As a result if a victim of the scam goes there, they might (hopefully) think twice about the scam they are caught up in.
SIGH
This is not targetting phishing.
Gee, I wish some of you would read. This is about Nigerian Scams and Advanced Fee Fraud otherwise known as 419 scams.
call the ISP hosting it and complain to them.
Nice in theory, but there are hosts who after being informed multiple times, and also after having chargebacks because the scammers use bad credit cards to pay for the hosting do nothing.
There are the exceptions, and we have formed very good associations with a number of hosting companies who understand what The Artists Against 419 and our associates from scambaiting forums such as http://www.419eater.com are tirelessly working against.
It is nice to know that the IT industry is full of experts who fail to do the first thing when presented with something new..... Try researching things guys. 1. The Mugu Marauder operates exactly the same as a web browser repeatedly refreshing with no cache on a specified list of target URL's (normally images because they typically have a large filesize compared to HTML pages). 2. The UID number generated for the application is used to tally stats for individual users, so just drop the paranoia. 3. FFS The sites targetted ARE NOT related in any way to legitimate banks. As I said if you did a little research before sprouting your "me too" crap you might realise just EXACTLY The Artists Against 419 are fighting against. 4. A DoS attack is defined as the act of deliberately trying to make a service on the attacked machine unavailable by flooding it with requests, sometimes using deliberately corrupted data packets. Now, I dont know where you tool come from or whether you sympathize with cyber criminals or are simply too dense to comprehend ths. We are downloading images from *CRIMINAL* fake banks after having tried to contact the hoster and shut down these *CRIMINALS* in vain at least two times or mopre. Then, and then only, do we actually start trying to deliberately exceed the allowed bandwidth of these *CRIMINALS*, so they cant use their bogus banks to prey on unsuspecting victims. It is *NOT* an attack on the servers, but on the *CRIMINAL* websites only.