Computer viruses

Hackers tap contact list for money
Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay, TNN, 15 February 2010,

KOLKATA: Picture this: your e-mail account has been hacked. You haven't taken it very seriously, but within minutes, your relatives and friends start receiving e-mails seeking monetary help.

There have even been instances of relatives abroad dispatching money in good faith to an unknown bank account. In internet crime parlance, this is called identity theft. And this has been a growing trend in recent times.

Incidentally, some high profile people are being targeted by these swindlers, most of whom are based in Nigeria. So bringing them to book is a difficult proposition.

Only a few weeks ago, Jawhar Sircar, the union ministry of culture secretary, was victim of such threat. Suddenly some of his relatives and friends started receiving the mails from Sircar's mail-id that Sircar is in trouble in Russia after losing his belongings. The mail requested them to remit some money to a bank account which he would return after coming back home. But Sircar got alarmed after receiving a call from one of the recipients of the mail.

Sircar lodged a complaint with the deputy commissioner (detective department) Damayanti Sen. The DD started an investigation. A large number of cyber crime cases like identity theft has prompted city police to initiate a Cyber Crime campaign. "We have got cases where an entire website has been hacked and misused. So we started a major campaign against identity theft offences with an advisory on preventing such crimes," said Sen.

According to sleuths, the hackers are choosing their targets carefully, picking on high-profiles people like doctors, professors and people holding important positions. The police probe has revealed that all the victims received e-mail messages, which seemed to be sent from well-known websites or social networking sites.

Such phishing mails include seemingly authentic logos and other identifying information copied from the legitimate website. The scamsters often place a link that seem to take users to a legitimate website but was actually the link to scam site. Unsuspecting users who click here, have their accounts hacked into and confidential information stolen.

Armed with this information, the fraudster then sends emails to those on the contact list seeking money to get out of an emergency during a foreign trip. Police officers said that the only way to stop such crimes is to raise awareness about them among internet users.

"We are asking people not to reply or follow the instructions of such unsolicited e-mail. Never share personal information online without verifying the authenticity, use a strong password having alpha-numeric characters and change it frequently. If the e-mail ID is hacked, make sure your contacts are informed immediately about this so that they don't end up getting duped. And report the matter to police immediately," said Sen

The above reminds me about an incident about one and half year ago.
I think many of us received an e mail from Bro. James requesting for money as he was stranded in a hotel in England with all his belongings missing.
Fortunately one of our boys contacted and informed Bro James who sent a desclaimer immediately informing everybody that the mail was a fraud.
One of the methods these people use to hack into your address book is they send Emails to you from know IDs asking you to become members of one or other social sites like hi5, Facebook, Orkut and many others.
They even ask you to click a link if you are not interested.
Whether you click the yes or no link you are trapped.
Delete such mails like hot coal.
Don't leave them in your mail box in case you click them accidently.
Have a good Anti-irus installed.
Nowadays viruses are attacking computers in hordes.
Today my office computer was attacked every five minutes by six different types of viruses. Our EDP people took almost 5 hours using two different anti-virus software to remove (14 + 143) viruses and trojans.
I sometimes wonder whether these anti-virus people themselves generate the viruses so that their software sell.
The more and viscious the attack the higher the sales figures.
Something which are doctors are very adept in doing.
First making a person ill and then curing him
We have a song "Tumhi ne dard diya hai tum he dawa dena" meaning you gave me the pain now you give me the medicine too.
Of course this is said by a lover to his loved one, not by a patient to the doctor.