Filed under Security
Tagged as CIA, fraud, scam
A con man fooled US spooks into grounding international flights by selling them “technology” to decode al-Qaeda messages hidden in TV broadcasts, it’s claimed.
A long and highly entertaining Playboy article explains that in 2003, 50-year-old Dennis Montgomery was chief technology officer at Reno, Nevada-based eTreppid Technologies. The firm began as a video compression developer, but Montgomery took it in new and bizarre directions.
He reportedly convinced the CIA that he had software that could detect and decrypt “barcodes” in broadcasts by Al Jazeera, the Qatari news station.
The Company was apparently impressed enough to set up its own secure room at the firm to do what Montgomery called “noise filtering”. He somehow produced “reams of data” consisting of geographic coordinates and flight numbers.
In December 2003, it’s claimed CIA director George Tenet was sufficiently sold on Montgomery’s data to ground transatlantic flights, deploy heavily armed police on the streets of Manhattan and evacuate 5,000 people from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge told the press the terror alert was the result of “credible sources – about near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11″.
In fact, according to evidence from his former lawyer, Montgomery, the “credible source”, was a “habitual liar engaged in fraud”.
Source: The Register
Rogue antivirus applications have been a serious threat to users for some time now, but the level of sophistication of these attacks has gone up several levels recently, as attackers have learned to copy exactly the GUI and virtually every feature of authentic AV programs.
An analysis of the recent threat by Dmitry Bestuzhev of Kaspersky Lab shows that the malware authors are getting ever closer to producing exact copies of legitimate antivirus applications. The look and feel of the fake antivirus is very close to that of the legitimate AVG product, and is certainly close enough to dupe consumers not intimately familiar with the GUI.
These fake antivirus attacks have become quite sophisticated and prevalent in recent months and are big business for the attackers behind them. It’s also very difficult for the average Internet user to tell the difference between an attack like this and the reminders from real antivirus applications. These attacks have shown up on a number of legitimate Web sites in recent months, including the New York Times home page, making them look all the more authentic.
Source: ThreatPost
Filed under Malware
Tagged as Malware, scam
Red Condor issued a warning about a new e-Card spam campaign that appears to come from American Greetings’ BlueMountain.com.
The email, with the subject line “You received a BlueMountain e-Card!,” suggests that users “need to install the Macromedia Flash Plug-in” to see the “complete version” of the e-Card.
The entire body of the email, which includes the header and footer of a legitimate Blue Mountain e-Card, is an executable. Clicking on any part of the messages launches a browser window, and depending on a user’s browser security settings, may download a virus automatically with only a single click.
The spam is being distributed by a botnet and has been aggressively targeting Internet Service Providers. The virus has also been identified as a banking Trojan.
Source: Help Net Security
Filed under Malware
Tagged as Malware, scam
It should be universally know by now that hot news and big events are almost always used by spammers, phishers and peddlers of scareware to reach the widest audience possible. The FIFA World Cup that takes place in South Africa next year is no exception.
The first one is a fake lottery, purportedly held by the South African Football Association. You are, of course, asked to pay “processing fees” or “transfer charges” so you can receive your winnings. We have already seen innumerable scams like this – one wonders is there is anyone who still falls for such a scheme. But, obviously some people still do, because scammers wouldn’t bother with it if there were no results.
In the second one you are offered to watch live games online. The insult is double: not only do you pay to download a player, but when you do, you don’t actually get a player, but scareware.
There will be a lot of fakes sites out there, and they will try to relieve of your hard-earned cash. FIFA warns that they are the only ones who will be selling tickets, and that only a few other companies will sell authorized packages.
Source: Help Net Security
Filed under Malware
Tagged as google, scam
Google has sued to stop what it called “a widespread internet advertising scam” being pushed by a Utah company that allegedly used the search engine’s trademark when offering work-at-home opportunities.
Salt Lake City-based Pacific WebWorks doctored up a variety of websites with regularly changing addresses that promised as much as $25 for every link posted on Google, according to a complaint filed Monday in federal court in Utah. (No, we don’t what it means to post links to Google, either). To get started, the sites claimed, readers needed to obtain a Google-sponsored kit.
Although the program was advertised as free, the websites claimed there was a nominal shipping and handling charge or access fee. People who signed up were charged substantial recurring fees that were often hard to stop, according to Google lawyers. Victims frequently received no kit in return, or even worse, received a DVD that contained malware.
“Because of the prominent use of the Google mark and false or misleading statements in the advertisements, consumers are tricked into believing – falsely – that these work-at-home kits are offered, sponsored or endorsed by Google,” the complaint states. “Consumers have sent letters and emails to Google complaining about fraudulent charges. Many have asked Google for a refund or asked Google to cancel the recurring charges, even though Google is not connected to the solicitations.”
Source: The Register
