pedma.com domain appraisals?

From time-to-time I get a unsolicited offers to buy domains that I hold, so it isn't wholly unexpected to get the occasional email about them. Here's one that came in today:

Subject: Regarding your domain [REDACTED].COM
From: "James Johnson" j.johnson98@rocketmail.com

Hello,
I came across your domain name [REDACTED]COM and I would be interested in buying it from you.
Here is my offer, you have to send me a professional appraisal from one of the following companies. and I will pay you 85% of the appraised price.
For payments under $2000 I prefer to use paypal. And for larger amounts of money I prefer if we used escrow.com

I accept appraisals from any of these companies:

-sedo.com
-pedma.com
-accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal from one of those companies please forward it to me, and we will do business.

Regards,
James Johnson

For reference, the relevant mail headers are:

Received: from eatfire.nexcess.net (208.69.122.200)
by [redacted] with SMTP; 17 Mar 2009 10:07:22 -0000
Received: (qmail 10697 invoked by uid 108); 17 Mar 2009 10:06:16 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO LYNKSIS) (admin@1nb0x.com@174.133.179.205)
by eatfire.nexcess.net with ESMTPA; 17 Mar 2009 10:06:16 -0000
From: "James Johnson"
Subject: Regarding your domain [redacted]
To: [redacted]

Well, my spidey sense started to tingle. The domain in question is not great and I'm really holding it for a future project that I haven't gotten around to. So I have certainly never had it professionally appraised.

So, let's say that I'm interesting in selling this domain and want to get a professional appraisal. Sedo charge $29, Accurate Domains charge $27 and Pedma charges $22.95. What's more, Pedma promises to refund your appraisal money or buy the domain itself if you don't sell it within 6 months.

Pedma looks like the best option. But who are they exactly?

Here's the thing - there is almost nothing about them in Google. It looks like they have been in the domain appraisal business for hardly any time at all. So isn't it odd that they are being recommended?

Let's look at the WHOIS details:

Registrant:
Billy McDOW
366 Kingswood Dr
Bedford, Nova Scotia B4B 1T8
Canada

Domain Name: PEDMA.COM
Created on: 01-Jul-08
Expires on: 01-Jul-09
Last Updated on: 12-Mar-09

Administrative Contact:
McDOW, Billy support@pedma.com
366 Kingswood Dr
Bedford, Nova Scotia B4B 1T8
Canada
9024950112 Fax --

Technical Contact:
McDOW, Billy support@pedma.com
366 Kingswood Dr
Bedford, Nova Scotia B4B 1T8
Canada
9024950112 Fax --

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1501.HOSTGATOR.COM
NS1502.HOSTGATOR.COM

It's hard to say if the details are genuine or not, but it certainly isn't an obvious fake. But a few days ago, pedma.com was registered to someone else:

Registrant:
Manuel Fichter
38 Matthew Drive
Hammonds Plains, NS B4B 1T8
Canada

Domain Name: PEDMA.COM
Created on: 01-Jul-08
Expires on: 01-Jul-09
Last Updated on: 05-Mar-09

Administrative Contact:
Fichter, Manuel admin@bizing.biz
38 Matthew Drive
Hammonds Plains, NS B4B 1T8
Canada
9024950112 Fax --

Technical Contact:
Fichter, Manuel admin@bizing.biz
38 Matthew Drive
Hammonds Plains, NS B4B 1T8
Canada
9024950112 Fax --

Domain servers in listed order:
DNS53-1.NEXCESS.NET
DNS53-2.NEXCESS.NET

About the same time, the IP address of pedma.com changed from 208.69.122.200 to 174.132.194.58. Now, the 208.x.x.x address was mentioned a few days ago on another blog for questionable domain practices, so you might suggest that this is not a coincidence.

The site itself seems to be free of malware, so poking around at the pedma.com site reveals a few other interesting things.

Click through to the Contact page:

The following contact details are listed:

20 Crawford Street
London
W1H 1PJ
United Kingdom

Email: support@pedma.com

It looks like this may be an accommodation address or perhaps a virtual office of some sort, probably located above a shop [sorry, IE required]. Definitely not Canada. (Update: it looks like a branch of Mail Boxes Etc thanks to Google's new UK streetview.)

Clicking through on the "Buy Now" link takes you to a PayPal page, also mentioning Canada:


The payee is "Unique Desktop". Whoever they are. This is one of the weakness of PayPal - I don't really have an idea who I am dealing with here. I don't advise that you pay them anything, indeed there is no part of the payment process that actually specified what domain you want appraising or your contact details.

A further clue that something is wrong comes from their "Service" page which contains the following text:

How much is your domain really worth? An expert evaluation of a domain name's value is critical intelligence for domain buyers and sellers looking to determine a fair market price. An appraisal is your first step to making a great sale!

Every appraisal individually researched by domain industry pros, because no software is a substitute for real-world experience.

Your domain name could be worth thousands of dollars and may even be tax deductible!

Join many others who discovered what their domains were worth using our Domain Name Appraisal Service! Your domain will be appraised based on a number of separate factors including marketability, brand recognition, unique type in traffic, and comparison with other domain name sales. In addition to the following criteria:

* TLD Value
* Length
* Hyphen
* Web Frequency
* Search Frequency
* Industry Value

After you make your first purchase we will email you your Pedma Account log in information. Once you are logged in, you will find all your domain appraisals neatly organized (including appraisal reports, and appraisal banners). We make it easy to keep track of all your appraisals!

In fact, the majority of this text is stolen directly from Sedo and Moniker - it's a straight copy-and-paste job.

So: this "appraisal" site appears to have been active for just a few days, the site content is stolen from others, the contact details on the page do not match the WHOIS, the payment process does not allow you to specify the domain to appraise and your contact details, and the IPs have recently been connected to another dubious domain name pitch.

It looks on the surface as if this is an attempt to get people to sign up for this so-called appraisal service, and nothing more. Pedma.com is certainly not a recognised or trustworthy site, so it is likely that the offer to buy the domain is similarly dubious. Of course, if you work for Pedma.com, please feel free to correct any errors in the comments section below.

If you have spent any money on the appraisal, then I would advise you to start a PayPal dispute to recover the money as there is some evidence to suggest that the original offer is not genuine.

Additional information:
a bit more research shows indicates the domain pedma.com was sold via eBay item #170253846100 in August 2008 to a member called unique*money, presumably this is Manuel Fichter.





Now, it might be that Mr Fichter sold the domain on and perhaps it is a coincidence that the new owner lives in the same area and has used exactly the same telephone number. Note that the seller "bargaindomains" is a reputable eBay seller who just sold the domain on in August.

About the London address: there is no company by the name of "Pedma" operating in the UK, according to Companies House.

The PayPal billing name of "Unique Desktop" is connected with the domain "fastbooster.com". The terse WHOIS details for that mention an email address of willyfichter@googlemail.com, but earlier last year it had a rather more full domain description:

Owner Contact:
Willy Fichter
Immo-World24 Limited
Am Soeldnermoos 17
Hallbergmoos, 85399, DE

Punycode Name: fastbooster.com
Unicode Name: fastbooster.com

Admin Contact
Willy Fichter

willyfichter@googlemail.com
Am Soeldnermoos 17
Hallbergmoos, 85399, DE
phone: +49 89381684552

Technical Contact
Hostmaster Strato Rechenzentrum
Cronon AG Professional IT-Services
hostmaster@cronon-isp.net
Emmy-Noether-Str. 10
Karlsruhe, D-76131, DE
phone: +49 72166320305

Zone Contact
Hostmaster Strato Rechenzentrum
Cronon AG Professional IT-Services
hostmaster@cronon-isp.net
Emmy-Noether-Str. 10
Karlsruhe, D-76131, DE
phone: +49 72166320305

Record expires on: 2009-05-04 20:35:24

Domain servers in listed order:

shades02.rzone.de
docks18.rzone.de

It is hard to be 100% certain who is sending out these "offers". But at a guess, one of these Mr Fichters might have an idea.

Update:
pedma.com has been suspended by HostGator. Yeay.



Another update (18/3):
The owner of pedma.com is now desperately trying to punt the domain name on Sedo for $1000, which is a bit rich considering that he ripped off Sedo's text for the fake appraisal site!

Adobe9.0-PDF.com

Here's an oddity when typing "Adobe" into Google.

The first ad refers to a web site called Adobe9.0-PDF.com - that's not Adobe, surely?


Nope.. it doesn't look like Adobe. Let's scroll down a bit


The bit at the bottom is interesting:

All tademarks and copyrights are used for comparison and/or compatibility purposes only and are the property of their respective owners. This website has no affiliation whatsoever with the owner of this software program and does not re-sell or license software. All software is freeware and/or shareware with the understanding that the user may need or want to pay for it later. Membership is for unlimited access to our site's resources. We provide an organized website with links to third party freeware and shareware software, technical support, tutorials and step by step guides.

To cut a long story short, you have to pay to download this free software (this is for "support").. of course you could just download it directly from Adobe.

So, this is kind of curious. Who's running this site? A look at the WHOIS for 0-pdf.com shows an anonymous registration, so no clue there.

The site is hosted on 208.118.54.244 along with several others:

• 0-pdf.com
• 1-pdf.com
• Burning-toolz.com
• Downzfree.com
• E-s0ftware.com
• Es0ftware.com
• Freedownloadhq.com
• Freedownloadsnow.net
• Grafix-viewer.com
• Internet-callz.com
• Mediaplayer-stop.com
• Populartitlez.com
• Security-bundle.com
• Virus-tools.com
• Xtremesoftware-ltd.com

They are all anonymous registrations apart from the last one:

Registrant: Xtreme Software Ltd.
7 Petworth Road
Haslemere,
Surrey GU27 2JB
United Kingdom
Domain Name: XTREMESOFTWARE-LTD.COM
Created on: 13-Apr-07
Expires on: 13-Apr-09
Last Updated on: 13-Apr-08
Administrative Contact: Software Ltd, Xtreme Support@XtremeSoftware-Ltd.com
Xtreme Software Ltd.
7 Petworth Road
Haslemere,
Surrey GU27 2JB
United Kingdom
8007843167 Fax --
Technical Contact: Software Ltd, Xtreme Support@XtremeSoftware-Ltd.com
Xtreme Software Ltd.
7 Petworth Road
Haslemere,
Surrey GU27 2JB
United Kingdom
8007843167 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.COVERTTECHNOLOGY.NET
NS3.COVERTTECHNOLOGY.NET
NS2.COVERTTECHNOLOGY.NET

Incidentally, shuffle across a few IPs to 208.118.54.247 and there seems to be another server belonging to the same outfit.

• 11-now.com
• 7-now.com
• 8-now.com
• 8-pdf.com
• 8-software.com
• 8-ultra.com
• 9-express.com
• 9-now.com
• 9-ultra.com
• Anti-viruz.net
• Antiviruz-now.com
• Avast-hq.com
• D0wnloadz.net
• Download-9.com
• Downloadcenterz.com
• Downloadzcenter.com
• Downloadznow.net
• Downloadzsoftware.com
• Dvdshrink-hq.com
• Ed0wnloads.com
• Esoftware-now.com
• Irfanview-center.com
• Irfanview-hq.com
• Mediaplayer-hq.com
• Panda-hq.com
• Pdf-now.com
• Pdf-soft.net
• Powerdvd-7.com
• Rarsoftware.com
• S0ftware-now.com
• S0ftware.com
• S0ftwarez.com
• Software-hq.net
• Softwarecenterz.com
• Swhq-cs.com
• Tutorial-hq.com
• Winamp-hq.com
• Winrar-hq.com

So, it looks like a UK company - and indeed Companies House lists XTREME SOFTWARE LTD (company 05604124) at being associated with that address, but states that it is dissolved. Another company, XTREME-SOFT LTD 05723281 is listed at the same address.

Company records for Xtreme Software Ltd indicate that it was forcibly dissolved, and the director was:

DIRECTOR: SHULLICK, DAVE
Appointed: 07/11/2005
Date of Birth: (redacted)
Nationality: HUNGARIAN
No. of Appointments: 1
Address: 6434 BAY CEDAR LANE
BRADENTON
MANATEE
FLORIDA 34203
USA

Dave Shullick is also linked with the domain xtremetransactions.com and Xtreme Innovations, LLC of Ohio. Shullick and another site was mentioned in the Guardian article enetitled Money for nothing in 2006. But as the company was forcibly dissolved in December 2008, the who is running these web sites?

Xtremetransactions.com is also linked to from the Adobe9.0-PDF.com site, showing that the two are closely related.



The UK address isn't much of a clue - it belongs to a company called Fletcher Kennedy, who specialise in forming other companies. Fletcher Kennedy are nothing to do with the site, but they have fulfilled the legal role of company secretary for both "Xtreme" companies, but they appear to have terminated that relationship.

Is the other XTREME-SOFT company any relation? It's odd that they both have very similar names and the same address, but the only director listed for XTREME-SOFT LTD is in Saudi Arabia:

DIRECTOR: QUBAISI, MOHSEN
Appointed: 22/03/2006
Nationality: SAUDI
No. of Appointments: 1
Address: 31952 KOBAR STREET
SAUDI ARABIA

It's not clear if these two entities are actually related in any way.

So, here's an outfit that is hiding its details and appears to have been operating by a firm that had been forcibly dissolved. So who exactly is running it now?

Anyway, that's enough foreplay. Let's get down to the money shot. Let's say that you want to download the software, first there's a registration screen.. then you get to see what this is all about:

Yup, they're trying to stiff you with a £27 charge plus 83p per month to download a free bit of software. Goodness only knows what "download accelerator plus" is.

Here we go.. £37 for something that you can get for free. My advice? Avoid this one at all costs!



If you have paid money to this company any want a refund, this RipoffReport suggests the following:

MONEY RETRIEVED!

Don't let these people get away with what they do.

Keep on emailing them as well as the third-party that bills their accounts. I got a full refund, including the so-called $5.99 service charge.

Explore you options on the next. Report them to the internet fraud site. Contact your bank and report them. In fact, do everything that you need to do.

I did not stop, until I got everything back.

Allegedly, the contact email address is support@software-hq.net (and that domain seems to have generated a lot of complaints) but you may be better off contacting your bank if you believe that you have been misled in any way.

Did the BBC just break the law?

The BBC's lightweight tech program "Click" took over a botnet of 20,000 machines to demonstrate the perils of zombie PCs. The BBC insists that this is perfectly legal: "If this exercise had been done with criminal intent it would be breaking the law."

So was it legal? Well, not according to the Computer Misuse Act. The BBC states that "the owners of unprotected PCs have been made aware that they are vulnerable to future attacks" and
"Click advised them on what steps to take to make their systems more secure". In fact, you can see precisely what they did on this video clip.

So.. did they just alter the data on the compromised PCs? It certainly looks like it - and because they have both gained unauthorised access to a PC and have altered information on it, then that is potentially a criminal offence under section 3 of the act.

3 Unauthorised modification of computer material

(1) A person is guilty of an offence if—

(a) he does any act which causes an unauthorised modification of the contents of any computer; and

(b) at the time when he does the act he has the requisite intent and the requisite knowledge.

Certainly the BBC carried out an unauthorised modification. But did they have the requisite intent?

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1)(b) above the requisite intent is an intent to cause a modification of the contents of any computer and by so doing—

(a) to impair the operation of any computer;

(b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer; or

(c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data.

Clearly, the BBC did not have malicious intent to carry out a) b) or c), so under UK law they are probably just about in the clear.

But that's just UK law (and they are skating on thin ice as it is). In some other countries, unauthorised access and alteration of data for any reason is likely to be a criminal offence. The BBC probably did this with good intent, but it was quite possibly an ill-advised thing to do.

Added:

Copied from the comments (thanks Joel!)

Erm... why did you miss out the important bit - which is (1):

(Computer Misuse Act 1990)

1 Unauthorised access to computer material (1) A person is guilty of an offence if—
(a) he causes a computer to perform any function with intent to secure access to any program or data held in any computer;
(b) the access he intends to secure is unauthorised; and
(c) he knows at the time when he causes the computer to perform the function that that is the case.
(2) The intent a person has to have to commit an offence under this section need not be directed at—
(a) any particular program or data;
(b) a program or data of any particular kind; or
(c) a program or data held in any particular computer.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to both.

As I understand it, this means that you only have to secure access to a program or data (i.e. ANY ACCESS AT ALL) without authorisation to have acted illegally. Hence, what they have done is certainly illegal. I doubt anyone will be punished though...

Joel

El Reg is covering this here, they quote Graham Cluley of Sophos who says that he believes the BBC did break the law. It looks like there is a storm brewing.

Now, I don't think the BBC breached security to access any data. Unauthorised access to a bot application is tricky, but the question revolves around them changing the wallpaper. It was certainly ill-advised in my view.

PIFTS.EXE

Well, this is interesting. Users of Norton Antivirus are finding an application calls PIFTS.EXE that is try to call out. But every time anyone posts a query on the Norton support forum, it gets deleted immediately (see this search).

PIFTS.EXE appears to be a part of a patching application. The executable itself is unencrypted and contains several interesting bits of text such as:

• http://stats.norton.com/n/p?module=2667
  
• The ping url is %s PATCH021809DB
• d:\perforce\entiredepot\consumer_crt\patchtools\patch021809db\release\PIFTS.pdb
• SOFTWARE\Symantec\PIF\{B8E1DD85-8582-4c61-B58F-2F227FCA9A08}\PifEngine
  

When run, it calls home to the following URL: http://stats.norton.com/n/p?module=2667&product=unknown&version=-1&e=-1&f=-1&g=-1&h=-1&i=0&j=-1 hosted on 67.134.208.160 at Swapdrive in Washington. Swapdrive is owned by Symantec, who make Norton.. so there's nothing suspicious there.

One odd thing is that the PIFTS.EXE executable is padded out to precisely 100KB (102,400 bytes) with a string saying "XXPADDINGPADDINGXX" several times. Presumably Symantec have their own reason for making sure that the file is exactly this length.

PIFTS.EXE appears to be contacting a statisitical tracking server, possibly to report back on the installed version. Perhaps this violates Symantec's privacy policy, perhaps it's part of the testing process that was accidentally included in the update.

Some people might say that the way Symantec is deleting posts indicates a cover-up. It is certainly suspicious, but my best guess is that there's a quality control issue here and the PIFTS.EXE process was never meant to be released.

VirusTotal gives it a clean bill of health. ThreatExpert shows that it doesn't do much except call home.

Classmates trojan: "Should I leave my Crazy Fat Wife for a younger woman?"

An unusual bit of social engineering here:

Subject: Classmates personal message: Please help me to decide which way to choose
From: "Gold - Classmates" online@groups.classmates.com

Special video report March 10, 2009
Message from your group member:

"Should I leave my Crazy Fat Wife for a younger woman? Please look video and Help me
to decide, please ........I need your help,
if possible - Write your opinion on the page wall"


Proceed to open full message text:

(removed)

Sincerely, Leslie Burks.
2009 Classmates Message Center.

If you click on the link (not advisable) you get the following page (hosted on a botnet somewhere):



You are then prompted to install and run a file called Adobemedia10.exe at which things will start to go seriously wrong.

The VirusTotal report indicates a very low detection rate for the binary (VBA32 flags it up as Embedded.Rootkit.Win32.Agent.ex). However, the ThreatExpert prognosis shows just how much damage this does, and identifies a C&C server at 58.65.232.17 which is a well-known malware server hosted by black hat hosting outfit Hostfresh.

This looks like a fairly horrible thing to try to clean up, and probably best to recover data, reformat and reinstall.

MikeCahil@gmail.com: "New Jobs"

There are several different layers of fraud and deception when it comes to offering and applying for jobs.

This particular approach is via a spam, and seems to be a deceptive way of offering cheap Indian contractors to companies. India is very much a centre for spam because of very lax laws, in this case "Mike Cahil" is offering to fill roles in a variety of fields, but why would you want to do business with a spammer in any case? Remember the Boulder Pledge.

Originating IP is 59.164.72.134, a subscriber to TATA Communications in India. The netblock is widely listed as being very spammy. A poke around at blacklists indicates that 59.164.0.0/16 is a real spam sewer, and strict mail administrators could consider blocking the entire lot.

From: "Mike Cahil" MikeCahil@gmail.com
Subject: New Jobs

Hi ,

I am doing a check with you, to see if there are any IT or Engineering jobs, I can help you today at [redacted]. I can help fill any Contractor positions or Direct-Hire positions or Contract-to-Hire positions.

Additionally, I can also help in the Accounting / HR / Sales / Management positions too.

Please do reply.

Thanks … Mike

email: [redacted]

Strange Tripod phish

Why anyone would want to phish for a Tripod account is beyond me, but for some reason webmail accounts seem to be a target. This phish for Tripod credentials has (so far) the following subjects:

Subject: For Tripod user
Subject: Important information from Tripod Team
Subject: Tripod Confirmation Form

The rest of the email is similar to the following:

From: "Tripod Customer Service" support@support.lycos.com


Dear Tripod user!Due to technical issues, the new Tripod software release is
currently on hold. However, a series of enhancements have been made. The new
client-server protocol is one of them. Now you need to complete Tripod Confirmation
Form to update your Tripod account.Please use the link below to access Tripod
Confirmation
Form:http://www.tripod.lycos.com/adm/redirect/www/form/tripodcf.aspx?[redacted]

Sincerely,
The Tripod Team
This message has been automatically generated.
Please do not reply to this message.
For information about the Lycos Privacy Policy Please see:
http://info.lycos.com/privacy
For information about the Terms and Conditions of this service Please see:
http://info.lycos.com/legal

The "http" link is fake, underneath the real URLs are www.tripod.lycos.comttlfile.eu/adm/redirect/www/form/tripodcf.aspx?=[redacted] and www.tripod.lycos.comproftd.tw/adm/redirect/www/form/tripodcf.aspx?=[redacted]. (I have redacted tracking information).

Oddly, the .eu and .tw hosts in question do not resolve at the moment, presumably these will be registered later. A trick that spammers sometimes use is to send out the spam and THEN register the domains, in order to trick spam filters.

It's probably a phish, it could be a drive-by download. In any case, best avoided and if you HAVE entered details into one of these phishing accounts then you should change your Tripod password and the password on any other site that uses the same username / password combination.

SQL injection attack: telecom.dgnet.net

This seems to be an emergent threat at this moment - a number of ASP / SQL / Windows site have been hit with a SQL injection attack with the following injected Javascript: telecom.dgnet.net/images/pen.gif. Yeah it says GIF, but it isn't.

The site telecom.dgnet.net is at 121.14.137.36, this forwards to another site at www.batnigt.com/ver.htm (on obviously, do NOT visit that site) which tries to run a number of exploits on visitors PCs, including what appears to be an old ADODB.stream exploit (perhaps MS04-024), the Snapshot viewer exploit (MS08-041) and some sort of exploit for RealPlayer plus what MIGHT be an exploit for MS05-020 (but I need to look at this further). If a visitor's PC is up-to-date on Microsoft patches and does not have RealPlayer then it should probably be OK.

If you manage client PCs, then block or monitor for telecom.dgnet.net and batnigt.com. If your server has been infected with this attack then you need to clean up the database and then sanitize your SQL inputs.. try Googling for that term.

CA eTrust woes, Win32/Tnega.AC and widespead update failure

CA eTrust has thrown up a couple of problems - first a false positive identifying Win32/Tnega.AC in the setup.exe for Office 2000 Professional, with signature version 31.6.6361.0.

However, when having a poke at this it turns out that the current version is 31.6.6367 and 6361 is a few days old. A check of our distribution servers show that every single one of them worldwide failed to download version 31.6.6362 from the CA servers and fell over. This happened at around 2245 GMT on 17/2/09.

Log files are showing the following error: Error [0xc0010003] initializing redistribution job.

If you are running CA eTrust ITM, then it's worth checking that your signatures are up-to-date.

Point Focus LLC: "The offer you can not say no to!"

"The offer you can not say no to!" Really. I betcha I can. My notes are in bold.

Subject: The offer you can not say no to! ["No": just did, did you see that?]

Point Focus LLC is now expanding!

To deal with the international payments processings we are now looking for people willing to facilitate establishing of our all-round-the-globe business connections and assist saving considerably by tax disbursing reduction. This position of the Financial Assistant involves accepting payments from our Australian, UK and US ( rarer Spanish) clients to your account and resending to our partners.

You are getting paid right by the moment you cash the payment. It's the commission in amount equal to 4% out the sum posted on your account. This very amount you're deducting before sending anything out. So, estimated roughly, you can make up to 2000$ extra monthly.
[A straight money mule operation then, laundering stolen money. 4% for basically doing nothing. Except you will never actually get to keep the 4% when the police catch up with you]

Plus, you get:

- flexi-time (usually 2-3 hours a day)
- Saturdays & Sundays off [woo!]

Requirements:

- Have to be aged 21 or above
- No criminal record [don't worry, you will soon get a criminal record if you participate in this scheme]
- Regular Internet access
- Ability to accept payments using your bank account [for the transfer of stolen money, which will be nice and traceable for the cops]
- Ability to resend the money through Western Union [which is NOT traceable, and is therefore money laundering]


If feel qualified, please, attach the following info to start up with:
[information that we should have known if we were offering you a job]
- Fist Name:
- Last Name:
- Age:
- Sex:
- Country
- State, City, Zip
- Phone number (home and cell)
- Valid email address

NOTE!!!! the email address you use to contact us for the first time is: IBCGroup0@gmail.com , in the subject field put "interested".
[odd that the email address doesn't match the one you sent from]

Please, use only mentioned email address, otherwise we'll fail to receive your response.

Originating IP is 92.84.13.66 in Romania. Just say "no".

Weird spam #2: "BREAKING NEWS - The Pope has been discharged from his office"

A genuine "wtf" spam here:

Subject: BREAKING NEWS - The Pope has been discharged from his office
From: "Press Officer"

BREAKING NEWS

Feb. 2009 - The Pope has been discharged from his office!

Find out more at Urgent news
[http://208.91.200.49/interspire/link.php?M=00000&N=5&L=1&F=T]

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The page 404s. But wait.. the email was sent from 208.91.200.49 and points to the same IP address. And the domain rcigi.com is hosted a few IPs over at 208.91.200.35.

What is rcigi.com? It calls itself the RC-Institute for Global Individuation and hides behind an anonymous domain registration. The site is either a spoof, or perhaps the domain of some religious nutters. It is hard to tell. Interesting, it is in English and German, and the way the English is written makes me think that it might be a native German speaker writing it.

The site indicates that it is run by a "Dr" Eduard Schellhammer of either Barcelona or Alicante. All the sites linking FROM rcigi.com are registered to Eduard Schellhammer, however it is possible that this is a sophisticated Joe Job and Herr Schellhammer is completely innocent. Still, all very odd.

Weird spam #1: "Warning! Virus detected"

A couple of bits of weird spam today, number one:

Subject: Warning! Virus detected

A possible virus was found in this message.
The virus name is: W32/Netskyb@MM!zip

-----Original Message-----
Hello, check my postcard!
[skipped]
--------------------------

In all cases leading to what appears to be a page on a compromised PHP-powered site, but in each case the page is coming up with a 404. Is it related to this?

UNYK.com: spam or what?

I really, really hate these contact managers that spam out invites to everyone's contacts. UNYK.com seems to be the latest of these:

Subject: Personal invitation from ****************

Hello,

This is a way to never lose contact.

Finally, a smart and simple way to manage your contacts!

With UNYK, I put all my contacts together in one address book that is automatically updated. One of my contacts changes his or her information at UNYK.com: My address book is updated. I change information at UNYK.com: My contacts’ address books are updated. Simple, but life-changing!

Can I add you as one of my contacts? To accept, click here!

You too can create your own smart address book.

Life-changing my arse.. Plaxo has been doing this for years and that's a pretty worthless application to.

If you are a corporate mail administrator, then my advice has always been to block this kind of rubbish. As you might expect, it comes with some downloads that you probably don't want to let anywhere near your users' PCs, and it is bound to generate a load of support calls asking "is this spam?" / "this looks like a good idea, doesn't it?" / "is this a virus?" / "how do I install this?" etcetera.

No, I'm not saying that UNYK.com is evil in any way, it is just that for many sysadmins this sort of stuff costs real money when the users latch onto it. The best thing to do is apply an IP block to 204.92.8.159 to 204.92.8.220, and hopefully you will never be bothered by UNYK.com again.

BitDefender: Trojan.Generic.1423603 in winlogon.exe

This looks like a false positive: BitDefender is reporting Trojan.Generic.1423603 in C:\windows\system32\winlogon.exe. This name is sometimes used by malware, but in this case no other product is detecting anything malicious.

Current pattern is for BitDefender is 2640654, pushed out on Friday 13th February (!).

I will post the ThreatExpert prognosis when I get it.. in the mean time I would suggest that you do NOT try to remove winlogon.exe as you will render your system unbootable. (NOTE: Do NOT reboot your machine as this will most likely break it!)

Update: ThreatExpert indicates that it is clean. Several comments confirm that it is a false positive. The problem seems to be on Windows XP SP3, SP2 does not seem to have the same issue. The MD5 for this file is ed0ef0a136dec83df69f04118870003e

It seems that there are several reports at the BitDefender forum. I would guess that BitDefender are aware of the problem, temporarily disabling the anti-virus scanner may be a good idea else your system may become unusable. Usually these issues are fixed in 24 hours.

Update 2:
If you can't get the winlogon.exe out of quarantine, then this is a copy of the original (English US) file for XP SP3. Use at your own risk - password is "bitdefender".
winlogon_xpsp3.zip

Good new. Bad news.

A couple of items of interest from The Register:

OpenDNS rolls out Conficker tracking, blocking
This seems like a great idea, especially for small organisations without IDS or traffic monitoring. The problem.. well, OpenDNS has been awfully slow recently and personally I had to stop using it.

Kaspersky breach exposes sensitive database, hacker claims
This looks like a case of an insecure SQL database, leading to a potentially nasty compromise. Kaspersky isn't the first AV vendor to be shown to have poor SQL security. Trend was hit last year, as was CA. In this case, it looks like a potential data breach which is embarrassing. There's no evidence that any Kaspersky product has been compromised, but you can see that it might be possible to leverage credentials exposed in the SQL injection attack and use them elsewhere.

Snow

It really doesn't usually snow this much around here...

Snow bear

The heaviest snowfall for a zillion years or something in the UK.. it appears to have brought out this snow bear which is lurking in the garden.


I think he's probably harmless enough.

Drive-by cloning of RFID passports

Here's a different type of drive-by attack than the usual one.. security researcher Chris Paget shows that it is possible to read RFID tages from a passing moving vehicle and clone all the information they contain.. for the price of $250 worth of kit off eBay.

UkrTeleGroup vanishes, morphs.

First some good news (via the WaPo Security Fix blog): well known black hat web host UkrTeleGroup appears to have vanished from the internet. The bad news is that seems to have morphed into a company called Internet Path which is masquerading as a US company.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that this is an Atrivo / McColo / Estdomains style situation where the bad guys are permanently shut down.. yet. But perhaps continued pressure on upstream providers might have some effect.. who knows?

Uh-oh

No doubt the whole of the south of England will grind to a halt under this stuff, to the amusement of people who get REAL snow.. but a rear wheel drive sports car with no snow tyres is not exactly ideal for these conditions.