A Phishing Mail From London

The new phishing spam

I received the following phishing attempt in mail today morning. It was too funny that I could not help posting it here.

Was looking for Nigerian origins, but strangely, looks like from China / Taiwan. I have added a wee bit of markup since this looks strange in blogspot's rendering.

From metropol.investigation ( at )gmail.com Sat Feb 07 23:52:42 2009
Return-path:
Envelope-to: paivakil ( at )localhost
Delivery-date: Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:52:42 +0530
Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=home.amd)
by home.amd with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from )
id 1LVrp8-0001YW-NB
for paivakil ( at )localhost; Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:52:40 +0530
X-Apparently-To: paivakil ( at )yahoo.co.in via 203.84.221.15; Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:46:22 +0530
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 61.219.218.115
X-YMailISG: 7KQ9HBAWLDu6R1F4irIwJm5qIQiIU6P6S2AX31Uv9G2bYZVffjR.c9lIhvyLmVKqwPpLYa0fp.mK8UxJiekEjJuiSh7IT.JMzwGjYos0gjwf1.5tK3HgWcTvaeJdvGgjwKO0bIC8qLIyDXY3rC8SBzT7wNaEB1BvJEzAf2nO3CwLxbRxuQBYlJzn3gvWbfzsKUcTlXipAHULWETGLGe_yNo5IxtXwMVkguKUPCDgNx9q
X-Originating-IP: [61.219.218.115]
Authentication-Results: mta107.mail.in.yahoo.com from=gmail.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=gmail.com; dkim=neutral (no sig)
Received: from pop.plus.mail.fy4.b.yahoo.com [206.190.53.11]
by home.amd with POP3 (fetchmail-6.3.9-rc2)
for (single-drop); Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:52:38 +0530 (IST)
Received: from 61.219.218.115 (EHLO changsing.com.tw) (61.219.218.115)
by mta107.mail.in.yahoo.com with SMTP; Sat, 07 Feb 2009 21:46:21 +0530
Received: by changsing.com.tw (Postfix, from userid 401)
id 52057701FF; Sun, 8 Feb 2009 00:16:18 +0800 (CST)
Received: from User (unknown [218.57.11.112])
by changsing.com.tw (Postfix) with ESMTP
id 0CA8A701FC; Sun, 8 Feb 2009 00:14:29 +0800 (CST)
Reply-To:
From: "Metropolitan Police Service"
Subject: Your payment overview
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2009 17:16:00 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Message-Id: <20090207161429.0CA8A701FC ( at )changsing.com.tw>
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
X-Virus-Status: No (Scaned by Clam Antivirus)
Status: RO
Content-Length: 2766
Lines: 41
LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE SERVICE.
ANTI-MONEY LAUNDERING UNIT
Wellington House 67-73 Buckingham Gate
London SW1E 6BE
Attention: Beneficiary,
Dated: 7th/FEB/2009
RE: AN IN-DEPT INVESTIGATION INTO YOUR DELAYED PAYMENT
We wish to inform you that it has come to our notice through our online security service that a huge amount of United States Dollars was scheduled to be remitted into your bank account a few months ago.
According to the report we received from the paying bank here in London, it states expressly that you have been dealing with the wrong people who have used several fake documents to obtain money from you for payment of charges/fees which we consider to be obnoxious.
We have been mandated to step into your transaction and put a STOP ORDER pending until you revert to us for clarification why your money is been delayed more than is necessary. You are hereby advised to stop further communications with your partners in Africa and Europe and co-operate with us to assist you get your payment in record time.
The government of the United Kingdom will not hesitate to bring you to book if you ignore this notice as your payment is causing so much embarrassment to our government and global financial Institutions who repose so much trust in the British banking sector for competence and accountability.
We have resolved with the internal Minister that your money should be paid to you through an Interswitch ATM Card (Automatic Teller Machine) You will only be allowed to withdraw $50,000 per day. The ATM will be loaded with $10,000,000.00 (Ten Million United States Dollars Only. This is inline with the international monetary regulations that not more than $10M should be loaded in an ATM Card. The PIN (Personal Identification Number) would be sent to you alone to your private email box for security reasons.
In view of the foregoing, you are expected to send us your mailing address where you wish the ATM card to me mailed to you by a UK Courier Company. You must also send us proof of ownership of the said fund before we can be able to process your ATM Card. This is for security reasons as there are many fraudsters on the internet.
We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
My direct telephone number is:+44 70457 17275
Direct fax:+44 8709 743597 We are glad to be of services to you.
Yours faithfully,
Inspector Donald Boldman
Metropolitan Police Service
London, England.
CC: British Home Office Logistics Department
CC: United States Financial Action Task Force (FATF)

I am sure that the apammers are going to pick up this post, and goung to send out more mails apparently originating from paivakil.

Mousilla, tuxpaint and verse

Linux @ Kerala Schools - an impromptu survey

One fine day, a couple of weeks back, I am visiting one of the villages on the Kerala - Tamil Nadu border, as a part of my job, (which is not even remotely connected with IT, BTW).

As is normal in most Indian villages, the village kids surround me, like flies around a lump of sugar. I continue doing my job.

Towards the end of the day, I find a few minutes to make eye contact with them; they are embarrassed.

"What do you do", I ask them. ("Which class are you studying" is what you ask, normally, but that often gives me misleading information - the kid will mumble some thing like "8th standard", while he actually working at some local tea shop for Rs. 8/- a day.

"8th, 9th, 10th" goes the chorus. They are very uncomfortable. "This saar is making seniors of the village uncomfortable, but why is he trying to talk to us?" is what might have crossed their minds.

"Ah. So you learn computers too??" The saar asks. The saar's full attention is now on them.

"Yes"; they say with a sense of pride.

"What do you learn on computers?" asks the saar. Finding some uncomfortable shiftiness, the saar adds helpfully - "games?"

The smile, and silence is self-explanatory. And then one of them nudges the other, and says, "verse".

"Huh?? What is 'verse"?" asks the saar. And then the bulb glows in the saar's head. "You mean 'word'?"

"No" is what their faces say.

Now, the saar is getting a faint idea of the things.

"The school computers run Linux?" asks the saar.

"Where have we heard of linux" is the look on the kid's face.

The saar now looks at the "verse" kid, and asks - "OpenOffice??"

All the kids brighten up, and nod in unison.

"Do they allow you to use the internet?" I ask. They nod. "What do you use to get on the internet?"

"Mousilla"

The saar is now amused, and the kids sense that the saar is happy for some reason. "What else do you do on the computer", I ask.

"TuxPaint", they say. They realise that limit of their knowledge is close by.

"So the computers run Linux"? I repeat.

The faces are blank. "Windows?, Ubuntu? Debian? RedHat?" I ask. The kids are frightened. They run away.

---

Last modified: Sat Oct 11 12:44:09 IST 2008

Returning from hard disk disaster

Rescuing from near disaster

Posting in hope that the experience may help somebody else.

It is night of 3rd May, around 10 PM. I am just back from a 250 KM journey on a crowded train. Am carrying loads (literally) of INR as part of official duties and am on edge of my nerves. Have to travel total of 1500 KM starting tomorrow, distributing the INR. (sorry, you need to be 60+ to get them)

At home, sister takes me straight to the computer and shows me the dreaded "boot disk failure" message. uh. oh.

I hit the reset key, and now get a grub boot disk error. Darn. I reboot, Go into bios set up, notice that the 2 hard disks are detected. So reboot. Within a couple of milli seconds after ide drives are detected (by the kernel), it is hell on the screen. D***N.

Hit reboot again. Wonder fo wonders, I get too boot screen, and the system boots up normally. Now I know that (a) something is wrong with the disk at primary master - /dev/hda. (b) if I reboot, I may not have a running system. Panic bells start to ring. I feel fire down my neck as biwi and 2 year kid are screaming silently at me. But I need the system - some acccounts info is there on /dev/hdc. Biwi cools off when I tell her that her IT papers are there and may be lost for ever if I get up without fixing the system NOW.

The problem - a failed/failing /dev/hda. Thankfully, only /boot is what is required on that. Most other info is mere data, which I think has been backed up. (Hmmm... not so sure, but was was more important is having a working system).

I need to have a useful /boot on /dev/hdc. A tired body. stressed mind and high bp does not help.

Fire up irssi. Ask for help in a couple of channels, and end up helping others. No help in sight from others. It is 11.30 pm. Voltage in the power system goes up, and the tubelights start burning. (lol).

I edit /etc/fstab and comment out the entry for /boot. Re-install grub on /dev/hdc. Run update-grub to create /boot/grub/menu.lst. Look at /boot shows that there is no kernel image or initrd image. Searches /var/apt/archives to find linux-image-2.6.24-1-686_2.6.24-5_i386.deb. Installs it. run update-grub to put in the required entries.

Hold breath, pray and say "sudo init 6".

Go into bios, and tell the bios to boot from the the other hard disk. Continue booting. Problem solved. Everything works fine.

What would have been the situation if it was the "other" OS? I would have spent more than couple of days reinstalling the OS, then all the applications, configuring them, setting up the security, and all that. Data recovery may still be a problem with both OSes.

Creep into the bed room, and kid is sleeping. Biwi gives a cold glare, turns around and sleeps. Hooo!!!!!

RMS gets it right (yet again).

Here is the latest on Microsoft embracing open source.

They got their licenses approved by the OpenSource Initiative. The people at OSI argued that it was a good move by Microsoft; and the people who warned about Microsoft's bad intentions and arguing against approval of the licenses were de facto ignored.

Now, the people at Microsoft (oh; yes, not Microsoft, the corporate entity) are calling the licenses "Shared Source". There appear
to be other licenses which are not approved by the OSI which Microsoft calls "shared source".

Given the enormous public relationship machinery they have, Microsoft is going to re-brand the OSI approved licenses as "shared source"; and in public eye, "open source" is going to be associated with "shared source".

This is what is bringing me to RMS. I am often wonderstuck at RMS' ability to foresee the future.

His statements on use of the term "Open Source" are turning out to be prophetic. People often insist that the term ``free software'' is confusing; and RMS used to (and still does) insist that the term open source is even more so.

With this googly from Microsoft, one needs to wait and watch for one or two years to find out which term is going to be more confusing; and which term is going to be associated with users' freedoms.

Organised Power of the State

I was taught (and used to teach) that the heavy burden of proof laid on prosecution in criminal cases was because the prosecution is the ``State'', with the ``might of organised power'' behind it. That was (and is) perfectly true and valid.

That that is one of the reasons I used to support, (at debates between us lawyers, law students and teaches) the diluted burden of proof in prosecutions for terrorist activities.

Not anymore. Guantanamo is only one reason.

The other is what we are hearing from Gujarat - a lady and her husband were burnt (for god knows what) in a fake encounter.

The Gujrat incident reminds me of the famous ``Rajan Case'' (see http://www.hindu.com/2006/04/14/stories/2006041415240400.htm and http://rediff.co.in/news/2000/jun/26george.htm) of the emergency era, when an engineering student was picked up, rolled using a heavy wooden rod used for de husking rice, and when he died, his body was burnt using sugar - so that it does not leave behind even the ashes.

It took a confession of one of the police officers involved to bring the final details to light.

These incidents emphasises that retaining the strict burden proof on the prosecution is required, even in prosecutions involving use of organised power of the criminal mafioso or terrorist against the state.

First Post

First post.