That’s the subject of a spam email I got this morning. It’s from “kenon nader” Here are the entire contents: “Greetings, how are you doing? Give we shall meet”
No link to a web site, just a return email address of someone at “allforchildren.org.” And right after typing this, I got another one, same subject and contents, from “duff shiahn-w <assessoriaadm@lo.unisal.br>”
What is the point of this stupidity?
[Update in the late afternoon]
Apparently it’s a buffer overflow attack trojan. I don’t think it works very well with Thunderbird, given that I have Javascript disabled (which is why I didn’t see the script). And my blog is now numero uno on Google for “give we shall meet.”
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s more info.
Bounce test, to see if your email is valid?
Poisoning your spam filter. When spam doesn’t contain any unique words, it’s harder for filters to tell what’s spam and what’s isn’t.
I suspect that the spam delivery networks are now selling their services to poor saps who don’t know how to make money from spam.
There’s a similar biz in the US – “we’ll set up your internet store and handle all fulfillment – you just collect the profits”. I’d guess that they make money by selling those services.
I would not attribute to deliberate enemy action what can more easily be explained by ordinary human brainlessness.
I’m going to guess what you’ve got is someone who bought a script or access to a bot farm and, not knowing WTF he’s doing, because he’s basically a skill-less hophead — this being why he’s in the Internet scam business — has misconfigured stuff, and fired off a round billion meaningless e-mail messages.
It’s time, and long past time, to introduce the equivalent of the postage stamp on e-mail, so that the marginal cost of sending one is no longer essentially zero.
Assuming it’s not misconfigured, we can surmise that such messages actually do create some profit for the sender.
How frightening is it that there are people walking around unattended that would actually FALL FOR IT?
In this case, there’s nothing to “fall for.” It’s completely pointless spam, with no way of getting money from the receiver.
Actually, that as a file name has been linked to a trojan called downloader
Bouncing and detection poisoning has been mentioned, it could also be a curiosity hook i.e. a social hack. That isn’t farfetched considering how few have to respond to spam to make it profitable; simple curiosity might result in more responses either as replies or by people typing in the domain name of the sender to look it up. Or perhaps it’s an attempt at false positive blacklisting as an attack on blacklists and/or the sender address.
Or if the price is low enough (and it probably is) it could be simple experimentation of the “what happens if we do this?” kind.
it could be simple experimentation of the “what happens if we do this?” kind.
In a just world, “what happens” would be that a dozen men appear at your door late one night, a few weeks afterward, wearing masks, carrying baseball bats and a dozen feet of manila rope.
Please keep in mind that Java and Javascript have absolutely nothing in common. In particular, disabling one does not disable the other: they are entirely independent.
Carl I think they should be given a second chance: tar and feather them and drop them in the middle of nowhere without any survival gear *looks at maps* halfway between Kaltag and Poorman in Alaska should do nicely but only during summer; millions of mosquitoes, flies, ticks and fleas should fit the crime nicely.