August 06, 2005
Massive Identity Harvesting!
Sunbeltblog: Identity Theft Update: "This was discovered by Patrick Jordan, a senior staff researcher here. Patrick is a veteran of spyware, and even he admits to never having seen something like this before. It's pretty staggering. "
Sunbeltblog: More on the identity theft ring: "Here is a quick idea of what happened: ... our most senior CoolWebSearch (CWS) expert, was doing research on a CWS exploit. During the course of infecting a machine, he discovered that (a) the machine he was testing became a spam zombie and (b) he noticed a call back to a remote server. He traced back the remote server and found an incredibly sophisticated criminal identity theft ring."
Hmmm... apparently linked to CWS? Connected to the Russian 'Mafia?' Harvesting personal information? Why doesn't this surprise me? It won't be long now and masses of the non-tech-literate will see and hear about this on CNN, FOX and NPR.
CWS uses spam email that exploits WindowsXP vulnerabilities and/or socially engineers the reader to get itself installed on the PC. Make sure your PC has installed all critical updates for Windows and its Internet Exploder browser.
(How bad is it online these days? Example: If you're online, running WinXP connected directly to the Internet without SP2 and without a firewall or router, it's already too late! Your PC was compromised in the time it took you to read this message!)
Remember: "It ain't free for nothing!"
While there are good, free online downloads, even they have a price! And that price is the cost of YOUR time and trouble to do your own research on it before you click that OK button! Fail to pay that fee and your PC will be owned and that owner will not be you.
Be smarter than the sleazeballs!
