Spammers Are Getting Clever...

[sophia8]

Got a spam email this morning, What was so different about it?
The subject line was "Evacuation process has been started due to radiation leaks at Sizewell B Suffolk Nucklear Power Station".
The message was:
"BBC, Suffolk - Major Problems have been occured at Sizewell B Nucklear Power Station - 13-years old circuit breaker fails to close, creating a 4,500-volt arc and fire. Possible radiation leaks on
100miles area. Evacuation process has been started - See video". With a helpful link to the video".
I thought "WHA---!!!!" and had almost clicked on the link before my brain kicked in.

Googling around, I find that this and similar emails have been all over the internets for a couple of days, with different nuke power stations named for different countries (maybe some sort of IP address sorting?).
In spite of myself, I have to admire their social engineering skills. The content of the email is so alarming that many people won't think before hitting the link.

 

[robinson]

That is evil.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Many years ago when the Usenet Group can.infohighway was in full flower, a university student ask us whether we had ever received any information over the Internet and what we had done with it. I replied that I had received gigabytes and ignored it all.

 

[Terry]

They might be getting cleverer, but their spelling isn't improving, I see...

 

[six7s]

They might be getting cleverer, but their spelling isn't improving, I see...

Cleverer? Maybe I'm even more ignorant than I think...

Nucklear Power Station - 13-years old circuit breaker fails to close, creating a 4,500-volt arc and fire

Don't circuit breakers do their job by opening?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Got a spam email this morning, What was so different about it?
The subject line was "Evacuation process has been started due to radiation leaks at Sizewell B Suffolk Nucklear Power Station".
The message was:
"BBC, Suffolk - Major Problems have been occured at Sizewell B Nucklear Power Station - 13-years old circuit breaker fails to close, creating a 4,500-volt arc and fire. Possible radiation leaks on
100miles area. Evacuation process has been started - See video". With a helpful link to the video".
I thought "WHA---!!!!" and had almost clicked on the link before my brain kicked in.

Googling around, I find that this and similar emails have been all over the internets for a couple of days, with different nuke power stations named for different countries (maybe some sort of IP address sorting?).
In spite of myself, I have to admire their social engineering skills. The content of the email is so alarming that many people won't think before hitting the link.

Ha-Ha! The joke is on you. That really happened and you should start glowing any day now.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

That is evil.

That's because Satan did it.

 

[a_unique_person]

Unless law enforcement can deal with this, it means the internet will be useless in a few years. Spam emails at the company I work for are increasing out of control, and causing numerous problems. A Spam filter just can't block them all, without causing side effects.

 

[Blue Bubble]

Unless law enforcement can deal with this, it means the internet will be useless in a few years. Spam emails at the company I work for are increasing out of control, and causing numerous problems. A Spam filter just can't block them all, without causing side effects.

Woohoo... I see an opportunity for a homeopathic spam filter - guaranteed to have no side effects. I'm gonna be rich.

 

[BillC]

Cleverer? Maybe I'm even more ignorant than I think...


Don't circuit breakers do their job by opening?

A nerd responds:

And closing.

A high-voltage circuit breaker comprises three individual phases, each of which must successfully and simultaneously open (or close) to operate. A failure of a single phase to perform would result in phase unbalance, a flashover, and possible highly destructive loss of the circuit breaker. This fault not only could happen, it does happen.

 

[Confuseling]

I've heard the idea mooted that if you were charged a nominal fee - even 0.01p (or cents) per email, spamming would become uneconomical.

Makes sense to me, and although it would heap costs on some companies, I think maybe eventually we'll hit a point where there's no other choice.

 

[six7s]

There's one simple, yet significant, flaw in this proposed solution: who collects the revenue?

If it's the ISPs, then there is one easy workaround for the spammers: set up their own servers

 

[grmcdorman]

Not to mention fraud in paying the fee (don't pay bill when it arrives, pay with bogus check/funds, or - more likely - hijack a legitimate user's account so they're stuck with the bill).

The latter, actually, is most likely, given that a lot of spam is a) sent from compromised computers and b) has forged originating addresses.

This suggestion comes up on Slashdot every once in a while, and generally gets shot down right away.

 

[Confuseling]

Ahh. You both raise valid points. I suppose the counterargument is that making end users pay - even if just nominally, would be the only way to make them take security seriously. As to setting up their own ISPs, I suppose you'd have to tax them according to volume, and then the rest of the net could unleash hardcore spam filters on the jurisdictions that didn't tax - but then that rather defeats the point, because you could simply use a trusted list of ISPs that didn't allow spammers in the first place without bothering with financial jiggery-pokery, if the ISPs could/would do anything about it.

What you'd do about forged addresses is another question entire. You may well be right, it might be unworkable - to be honest I haven't thought about it that hard.

Internet. Tricky business.

 

[shadron]

As far as the arcing goes, see these: http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm . The comments all mention the fact that the arcing occurred due to unexpected conditions, and that opening interrupters (circuit breakers) up-line was what extinguished them, so it is conceivable that a breaker not opening could facilitate such an arcing fire.

 

[six7s]

Of all the things I didn't know, I didn't know that the most