My reaction to this NYT article:
I was shaking my head when I read it.
Not because I find the whole article unbelievable but rather because it brought back memories of how incredible stupid some people can be...and I don't mean the DNC or any of it's personnel in general.
The following has nothing to do with the content of the article so don't read it if you don't want to:
Back about 20 years ago when most people were not on the net and the only thing most Americans knew about the "Internet" was a company called "America Online", my sister' son, who was all of 14 year old at the time, was getting checks in the mail of over $20,000 a month.
Now my sister found this really strange (to say the least....lol) and she didn't believe his explanation that he was doing something for an online company and her son wouldn't give her specifics so after 4 months of the checks, she finally asked me to confront him since he never lied to me.
Well, after cajoling him and threatening him and pleading with him, he not only told me but he showed me how he was making money.
First he join a private channel on a specific server on IRC called "WAREZ" and downloaded a AOL massmailer. A AOL Massmailer is basically a program where your account goes from chatroom to chatroom on AOL and collects all the names in the room and adds it to your email database. It then cc the email to about a thousand people at a time every 3 seconds.
So a few hours of leaving this program on while the kid was in school and he can literally get hundreds of thousands of AOL email address.
There were many start up webpages at the time that would pay you (I think) about a half a cent for every click you directed their way.
So sending out hundreds of thousand, even million of AOL emails saying "Click this button for free membership to XXX porn site" was bound to create some revenue for my sister's son, and others like him, especialy since online porn was a big WOW to many people when the Internet started taking off.
But AOL had a problem with individual accounts sending out so many emails. I think anything over 100 at a time got you an inquiry from them and anything over 1000 a time would get you kicked off AOL.... with your account cancelled. They would send the e-mails...but your account gets cancelled a few hours afterwards.
So what to do?
You obviously can't use your own AOL account.
If you remember AOL, each account could generate 5 screenames.
So some smart ass thought up the idea of making up a second screenname in his real account. Something like...oh I dunno....A0L SECURITY or A0L ADMIN (AOL wouldn't let you use "AOL" as part of your screenanme so these kids just spelt "AOL" with the number zero.
They also made programs, called "MASS PHISHER" at the time, the program would go into chatrooms after chatrooms and mass instant message everyone with the A0L ADMIN screename and basically say:
"Hi, this is the America Online security, we have reasons to believe you are using an account that has been compromised.* Please respond to this message with your screen name and password and the name this account is registered to so we can verify the authenticty of your account"
Well, this generated thousands of authentic logon names and passwords.
My mouth dropped open and I remember thinking "Omg...how stupid are these people. Do they not have common sense??"
So what happens after that is these kids used these accounts to send out literally millions of "click here for porn" emails to generate a lot of money for themselves and their account was perfect safe since they used everyone else's account.
So there:
I basically gave you a history lesson of how junk emails and "Phishing" started. :P
The hackers at the time (called themselves "Phreaks") felt that all softwares (they called it WAREZ) should be free of charge so their motto at the time was "KEEP IT PHREE" using the "PH" instead of "F".
That's how "Fishing" got transformed into "Phishing".
Phishing wasn't limited to logon and passwords but also asked for CC numbers and you'd be surprised how many people passed those out.
LoL.....
................
Sorry for the useless story.
This article brought back memories of that for some reason.
Anyway, this article, if anything close to the truth, it tells me people aren't getting any smarter.
Simple common sense will go a long way to avoid instances like this in the future.
Didn't add any new revelations for me other than that we have to firm up our security and teach the people that has access to sensitive material some common sense.
Sorry...just felt like typing and blabbing.....LoL.
I was shaking my head when I read it.
Not because I find the whole article unbelievable but rather because it brought back memories of how incredible stupid some people can be...and I don't mean the DNC or any of it's personnel in general.
The following has nothing to do with the content of the article so don't read it if you don't want to:
Back about 20 years ago when most people were not on the net and the only thing most Americans knew about the "Internet" was a company called "America Online", my sister' son, who was all of 14 year old at the time, was getting checks in the mail of over $20,000 a month.
Now my sister found this really strange (to say the least....lol) and she didn't believe his explanation that he was doing something for an online company and her son wouldn't give her specifics so after 4 months of the checks, she finally asked me to confront him since he never lied to me.
Well, after cajoling him and threatening him and pleading with him, he not only told me but he showed me how he was making money.
First he join a private channel on a specific server on IRC called "WAREZ" and downloaded a AOL massmailer. A AOL Massmailer is basically a program where your account goes from chatroom to chatroom on AOL and collects all the names in the room and adds it to your email database. It then cc the email to about a thousand people at a time every 3 seconds.
So a few hours of leaving this program on while the kid was in school and he can literally get hundreds of thousands of AOL email address.
There were many start up webpages at the time that would pay you (I think) about a half a cent for every click you directed their way.
So sending out hundreds of thousand, even million of AOL emails saying "Click this button for free membership to XXX porn site" was bound to create some revenue for my sister's son, and others like him, especialy since online porn was a big WOW to many people when the Internet started taking off.
But AOL had a problem with individual accounts sending out so many emails. I think anything over 100 at a time got you an inquiry from them and anything over 1000 a time would get you kicked off AOL.... with your account cancelled. They would send the e-mails...but your account gets cancelled a few hours afterwards.
So what to do?
You obviously can't use your own AOL account.
If you remember AOL, each account could generate 5 screenames.
So some smart ass thought up the idea of making up a second screenname in his real account. Something like...oh I dunno....A0L SECURITY or A0L ADMIN (AOL wouldn't let you use "AOL" as part of your screenanme so these kids just spelt "AOL" with the number zero.
They also made programs, called "MASS PHISHER" at the time, the program would go into chatrooms after chatrooms and mass instant message everyone with the A0L ADMIN screename and basically say:
"Hi, this is the America Online security, we have reasons to believe you are using an account that has been compromised.* Please respond to this message with your screen name and password and the name this account is registered to so we can verify the authenticty of your account"
Well, this generated thousands of authentic logon names and passwords.
My mouth dropped open and I remember thinking "Omg...how stupid are these people. Do they not have common sense??"
So what happens after that is these kids used these accounts to send out literally millions of "click here for porn" emails to generate a lot of money for themselves and their account was perfect safe since they used everyone else's account.
So there:
I basically gave you a history lesson of how junk emails and "Phishing" started. :P
The hackers at the time (called themselves "Phreaks") felt that all softwares (they called it WAREZ) should be free of charge so their motto at the time was "KEEP IT PHREE" using the "PH" instead of "F".
That's how "Fishing" got transformed into "Phishing".
Phishing wasn't limited to logon and passwords but also asked for CC numbers and you'd be surprised how many people passed those out.
LoL.....
................
Sorry for the useless story.
This article brought back memories of that for some reason.
Anyway, this article, if anything close to the truth, it tells me people aren't getting any smarter.
Simple common sense will go a long way to avoid instances like this in the future.
Didn't add any new revelations for me other than that we have to firm up our security and teach the people that has access to sensitive material some common sense.
Sorry...just felt like typing and blabbing.....LoL.
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