Elliott C. Back » Spam

Facebook Virus – Suspicious Activity Log

Elliott Back — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:06:06 +0000

I think I’ve been hit by the latest lame Facebook virus-like application! It’s called suspicious activity log, and it’s designed to trick people into approving it by sending an official-looking message to as many friends as it can indicating that their “profiles have been reported as terms of service (tos) violations.” Here’s a screenie of the notification it posted to me:

I went to the application page, and this is what I got:

The Facebook “friend” who was stupid enough to install this piece of crap malware is no longer my Facebook “friend.” Fortunately, I’ve never met him in real life, so the pain to my heart is minimal!

Matt is not Wordpress

Elliott Back — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:19:38 +0000

Matt Mullenweg is the creator of Wordpress, but recently his blog entries feature mostly galleries of jealousy-inducing photographs taken on jaunts around the globe on some high-end camera equipment. Few, if any, have anything to do with the Wordpress blogging software. Most Wordpress-focused posts now come from the official Wordpress blog.

Since half of the items in my dashboard are currently irrelevant to me as a Wordpress user, hopefully the time is approaching when Matt’s personal feed will be replaced or removed.

MacWorld MacRumors Live Feed Hacked

Elliott Back — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:14:07 +0000

I was watching the MacWorld 2009 Apple Keynote live when a message appeared in the feed–”STEVE JOBS JUST DIED”–surprising everyone. In a few minutes, the MacRumors feed was full of coordinated hacked spam:

Highlighted is the beginning of the spam

MacRumors apologized for the incident: “Our MacRumorsLive keynote coverage was hacked today, inserting inappropriate content into the text and photo feeds. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to restore our services.” However, it was simply negligence on their part for having a control panel which was publicly accessible rather than some kind of nefarious hack. One of the nicer 4chan readers took this screenshot of it before it was taken offline:

See also When Livestreams Go Wrong and 4chan’s /g board where the chaos originated. Hopefully this will teach bloggers and web startups to pay more attention to the security of their websites, as hacking websites is growing more and more popular with savvy internet pranksters.

Domain Name Registration Scam

Elliott Back — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:34:08 +0000

I just received an interesting email, which “offers” to help me secure my .com domain name in the Chinese varieties .cn and .hk. It’s more of a threatening piece of spam, because it carries the fear that if I do not avail myself of their services, them or another company will steal my brand!

Subject: YOUR DOMAIN NAME (elliottback)’S CURRENT SITUATION

Dear ELLIOTT C.Back

We are the domain name registration organization in Hong Kong, ,which mainly deal with the domain names’ conflicts of the company in China and Asia regions.We have received an formal application online from one company named “TianHaiYuanTong (China) Investment Co.Ltd” who is trying to apply for the domain names(www. elliottback.cn www. elliottback.hk etc.) and the Internet keyword(elliottback) as their domain name and internet brand on Oct 6,2008.After our initial examination, we found that the keywords and domain names being applied are the same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. If you don’t know this company, we doubt that they buy these domain names with other aims. We have not started the registration for TianHaiYuanTong company until now. In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by telephone or email as soon as possible.

Best Regards,
Boyce Meng

Tel: +852-31757931 (ext8048)
Fax: +852- 31757932
Email: boyce.meng@hk-nsc.org.cn

Hong Kong Network Service Company Limited
website: www.hknsc.hk

However, as far as I can tell, there is no such “Tian Hai Yuan Tong” company, and I am not replying. I advise you to do the same, and post any more samples of this spam in the comments!

MySpace Hacked Phishing Error Message

Elliott Back — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:10:44 +0000

I was somewhat scared when I noticed this list of usernames / passwords for MySpace. Yeah, someone actually managed to hack my MySpace account, which is more incredible given that I don’t ever log into it:

Myspace hacked accounts 3/20/08
Here a list of myspace accounts and passwords

Example:
Username : Passwords get it

MySpace is pretty advanced in this regard; somehow they detected that my account had been compromised and when I logged in now to change the password, I received this neat message warning me:

MySpace Announcement: Your account has been phished!

What can I do?
Change your password. And don’t use your current password ever again. Why do I care? We’ve blocked your account until you change your password. This means you can’t send a message, post a bulletin, send a comment or add a friend until you’ve changed your password.

What does “phished” mean?
“Phished” means that someone stole the email address & password that you use to login to MySpace. They might be sending out messages, comments or bulletins as you!

How did this happen?
You went to a fake page that asked for your MySpace login email and password, and you gave them your info. Only login to www.myspace.com. Learn more

I’ve changed all my users and passwords now, but still it’s a tiring experience…