CurrencyVendor.com: can you trust it?

Another doubtful World of Warcraft site is currencyvendor.com hosted on the same server as these other WoW scam sites.

Does it look trustworthy? Well, no. It's hosted by YoHost.org on the same server as a load of WoW scams sites, phishing sites, fake internet companies, bogus pharmacies and all sorts of other things. The domain was set up a few days ago, and is hosted on an anonymous server with anonymous contact details. Given the very high number of scam sites on this server, the lack of history and the anonymous contact details we would strongly recommend that extreme caution be taken if dealing with this site.


Update: the people behind CurrencyVendor.com deny that it is a scam, but acknowledge that their web host does host scam sites. They also decline to identify themselves. Draw your own conclusions, but as a general rule doing business with someone who refuses to identity themselves is a bad idea.

$1 + $3 + $8 + $20 + $52 = $84

This is a interesting gambling spam which tries to entice you to an online casino called worldelitecasino.net hosted in China.

Subject: Re: yo mate
Date: Tue, August 25, 2009 5:19 pm

yo mate..


ok I`ll give you my trick but if you give it someone else I`ll fuckin kill you :)
you know in roulete you can bet on blacks or reds. If you bet $1 on black and it goes black you win $1 but if it goes red you loose your $1.
So I found a way you win everytime:

bet $1 on black if it goes black you win $1

now again bet $1 on black, if it goes red bet $3 on black, if it goes red again bet $8 on black, if red again bet $20 on black, red again bet $52 on black (always multiple you previous lost bet around 2.5) if now is black you win $52 so you have $104 and you bet:

$1 + $3 + $8 + $20 + $52 = $84 So you just won $20 :)

now when you won you start with $1 on blacks again etc etc. its always bound to go black eventually (it`s 50 / 50) so that way you eventually always win. But there`s a catch. If you win too much (like $800 a day) casino will finally notice something and can ban you. I was banned once on red teaching casino. So don`t be too greedy and don`t win more then $200 a day and you can do it for years. I think bigger casios know that trick so I play for real money on smaller ones, right now I play on elite world casino: www.worldelitecasino.net for more then 3 months, I win $50-$200 a day and my account still works. You`ll find roulette there when you log in go to "specialt games" - "american roulete". And don`t you dare talling about it anyone else, if too many people knows about it casinos will finally found a way to block that trick. If you have any questions just drop me a line here or on skype.

c ya

In brief, the spam is pitching a roulette "system" that guarantees that you will win, and recommends an online casino where you can use it. The target site has an executable called SmartDowload.exe which was written by RealTime Gaming, Inc.

So, in fact the "Casino" doesn't exist - it leads to a legitimate (but potentially unwanted) desktop gambling application, the executable itself looks like part of Realtime Gaming's affiliate program of something (the Download ID is 1273059)


Presumably the spammer gets some payment per signup or something.. and this can actually be a lot of money in some cases.

So.. what about this "system" then? Well, in reality it doesn't work. It's a version of the Martingale System which basically says that you should double your bet each time you lose (in this case double-and-a-bit).. because eventually you will win your money back. That sounds fine in theory, but eventually you either:

1. Run out of money - because the value increases expontentially, in the example in the spam the next levels to bet would be $130, $325, $813, $2031, $5078, $12,595, $31,738, $79,345, $198,364, $495,910 and then $1,239,776). You will always run out of money before the casino does.
2. Hit the house limit - most casinos have a limit beyond which you cannot bet, usually a few thousand dollars. So, you'd hit the house limit before the Martingale system ever paid off, even if you did have nearly unlimited funds.

There's a more detailed writeup at Greg Kochanski's blog explaining the maths behind it.

Personally, I think there's only one thing to remember about casinos: the house always wins!

"PD Domains": topnameappraisals.com and greatestnamesonline.com scam

Two more scam domain appraisal sites - greatestnamesonline.com and topnameappraisals.com following on from pddomains.com and countless other ones.

If you receive an unsolicited email listing either of these two companies as appraisal outfits, then it's a scam. More information here.

Update: there's also topnameappraisal.com which is another domain doing exactly the same thing.

dia-company.net scam

Another job scam from Michell.Gregory2009@yahoo.com. It's not clear exactly what "job" they are offering, but it will definitely be a scam and probably be illegal.

Subject: Job Search Results on Monster.com

Greetings,

Our Company is ready to offer full and part time work in your region. We are among top managing companies in North America and Europe.

If you are interested in career growth and good salary, send your resume ONLY to the Company?s email address: hd@dia-company.net

Reply only via corporate email, so please just use this one for further contact and
correspondence: hd@dia-company.net

With best regards,
HD department
DIAGROUP

The domain registration details are:

Domain name: dia-company.net

Registrant Contact:
NA
Gregory Michell Michell.Gregory2009@yahoo.com
+1.3023892438 fax: +1.3023892438
5215/2 SW 152 Court
Beaverton NA 97011
us

Administrative Contact:
Gregory Michell Michell.Gregory2009@yahoo.com
+1.3023892438 fax: +1.3023892438
5215/2 SW 152 Court
Beaverton NA 97011
us

Technical Contact:
Gregory Michell Michell.Gregory2009@yahoo.com
+1.3023892438 fax: +1.3023892438
5215/2 SW 152 Court
Beaverton NA 97011
us

Billing Contact:
Gregory Michell Michell.Gregory2009@yahoo.com
+1.3023892438 fax: +1.3023892438
5215/2 SW 152 Court
Beaverton NA 97011
us

DNS:
ns1.freedns.ws
ns2.freedns.ws

Created: 2009-06-25
Expires: 2010-06-25

That email address is well-known.

The site is hosted on 121.12.127.241 in China, it is probably safe to assume that every other site is similarly some sort of scam or malware site and should be avoided.

• 00freewebhost.cn
• Anilyclickux.com
• Anilydclick.com
• Anilymclicks.com
• Armor1.info
• Armor2.info
• Autohitssite.com
• Bote-abfertigung.com
• Ckinter.cn
• Ckinter.ru
• Compy.info
• Dia-company.net
• Earntoclicklr.com
• Festgroup.net
• Googleautohits.com
• Googledolis.com
• Googledues.com
• Googleehits.com
• Googleipad.com
• Googleledal.com
• Googlepayclicks.com
• Googlepayhits.com
• Googlepaylr.com
• Googlesrx.com
• Ilos-group.com
• Ilos-group.net
• Inzo-group.com
• Inzogroup.net
• Inzo-group.net
• Jethitclicks.com
• Makemogoogle.com
• Mavr-best.com
• Medikmenty.com
• Mybotnet.org
• Perenils.cn
• Prex-group.com
• Prex-group.net
• Resogroup.net
• Smallclicks.net
• Spyware-file.info
• Spywarehome.info
• Spywarepc.info
• Spyware-systems.info
• Taxvac.com
• Thjgoogle.com
• Tincash.cn
• Varnagroup.net
• Vicogroup.net
• Viphack.ru
• Vsehorosho.info
• Zentin.net.cn

Some "World of Warcraft" Scam sites

I don't play WoW myself, but there are a whole bunch of bad guys out there trying to rip off player accounts for money. Here are some recent domains hosted at scam-friendly YoHost.org that you should avoid.. if you HAVE entered your password into one of these sites, then change it NOW.

• Blizzard-battle.net
• Blizzard-promotion.com
• Promotions-battle.net
• Promotions-worldofwarcraft.com
• Worldotwarcaft.net
• Wowmovieteaser.com
• Wowtcgpromotion.com

CA eTrust goes nuts with StdWin32 and other false positives

CA eTrust ITM has gone completely nuts today, with a load of seemingly random false positives mostly for StdWin32 in a large number of binaries, including some components of eTrust itself.

The core problem seems to be a signature update from 31.6.6672 to 33.3.7051, there seems to be little consistency in what is being detected as a false positive although there are multiple occurrences of Nokia software, VNC and event DLLs and EXEs belonging to eTrust's core components.

Probably the best thing to do is block the update or change the Realtime scanning behaviour to "disabled" or "report only".

Update: problem seems to have started at about 0525 GMT when the new signature pattern applied. There no consistent pattern to the infected files, it looks like it happens at random. Several other people seem to be having the same issue!

Update 2: Signature pattern 34.0.6674 appears to fix this problem. You can then enjoy repairing your faulty machines.. thanks CA!

Update 3: Amusingly, CA eTrust seems to have deleted its own key components in many cases. I don't know if this is the first recorded case of an anti-virus application mistaking itself as malware!

Update 4: CA have released a statment as follows:

Last night, CA released a new updated antimalware engine. This new release has resulted in false positive detections of a number of files. CA Threat Manager customers are the only customers being affected by this issue. This is not a result of signature updates and does not impact CA consumer Internet security products.

To resolve the issue, CA has rolled back the new engine and re-released its previous antimalware engine. CA customer support representatives are on call to answer customer questions and to provide remediation support. A remediation tool to rename the quarantined files is now available through CA support and will soon be accessible online.

CA is aggressively working to resolve the issue, assist any customers who have been affected, as well as identify the root cause of the incident. We apologize for this inconvenience and look forward to the roll out of our new antimalware engine, which will ultimately offer our customers many benefits including enhanced malware protection and improved performance.

Update 5: Got a mention on El Reg.. funny thing is that I went in to work today wearing my El Reg T-Shirt. Coincidence? Consiparacy? Cockup?

PS: Please remember to read the comments if you are still having problems!

Fleos.com and Flyappraisal.com scams

Two more domain appraisal scams following on from this one, Fleos.com has been around for a few days and is a copy of the flyappraisals.com / flyrating.com fraud.

In the same vein, the scammers have also registered Flyappraisal.com which will not doubt be used for another batch of fake domain appraisal fraud soon.



Avoid these, and if you have paid for a so-called appraisal via PayPal, then use the PayPal dispute procedure to get your money back.

pddomains.com scam

This is part of a long-running scam where you receive an unsolicited offer for a domain name.. the scam is that you are offered a choice of three appraisal services, the cheapest of which is controlled by the scammer. Once you have paid for your appraisal, the offer to buy the domain mysteriously dries up.

Subject: Offer to buy [redacted]
From: "Resale Domain" <resaledomain@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, August 9, 2009 6:00 am

Dear Sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name [redacted] and offer 65% of the appraised market value.
As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

sedo.com
pddomains.com
accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,

Thank you,

B. Phillips
Resale Domain

The site looks professional enough, but it's a cookie-cutter design that has been used for previous frauds here, here, here and here although sometimes the same crew use this design.

Email originates from 64.186.128.191 in the US and points to a domain on 124.217.231.209 in Malaysia. WHOIS details are anonymised and the domain was only registered on 7th August, nontheless the most likely perpetrator is detailed here.

If you have paid for an appraisal, then you should start a PayPal dispute to get a refund. Hopefully, that will also get the fraudster's account shut down.

MS09-034 is coming..

Just a reminder that Microsoft are announcing an out-of-band patch today to fix a critical IE / Visual Studio flaw. If you manually authorise updates to client PCs via WSUS, then you will need to break the usual schedule and deploy this as soon as you can.

More info here and here.

"Best Crisis Prices": dotbestshop.com / bestcrisisprices.com fake shops

I mentioned bestcrisesprices.com a few weeks ago, and it seems that they have a new domain called dotbestshop.com which is also a fake ecommerce site.


Both sites are hosted on an an anonymous hosting account at 124.217.231.121 in Malaysia, the domain contact details are either anonymous or fake. The contact details on the website are also fake, and have been stolen from legitimate businesses.

It claims to be a member of the BBB, but it isn't as the BBB reports that it is mis-using their logo.

This is part of a large organized crime ring, nominally connected with China. Although it claims to be based in Louisiana, there is no evidence at all that this is a US operation. Avoid dealing with them at all costs.

Even the bad guys need a back office

Last November, I posted a warning about Ran-De-Vou which was recruiting for translators.. the problem being that the company was part of an organised crime ring and the translations themselves were aided phishing and the like.

Well, "Juice" gave them a go and the result is this interesting insight into the bad guys' back office functions.. enjoy!

"Real Host Ltd" is a real sewer

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Even more pathetic SpamCop.net phish

I thought that phishing emails couldn't get more rubbish than this but it turns out that I was wrong. Enjoy:

Subject: FINAL ACCOUNT UPDATE!!!
From: "SPAMCOP SUPPORT TEAM" <helpdesk@spamcop.net>
Date: Wed, July 22, 2009 7:15 pm

Dear spamcop.net Subscriber,

We are currently carrying-out a mantainace
process to your spamcop.net account, to
complete this, you must reply to
this mail immediately, and enter your
User Name here (,,,,,,,,) And Password here
(.......) if you are the rightful owner of
this account.

This process we help us to fight against
spam mails.Failure to summit your password,
will render your email address
in-active from our database.

NOTE: If your have done this before, you may ignore
this mail. You will be send a password reset
messenge in next seven (7)
working days after undergoing this process
for security reasons.

Thank you for using spamcop.net!
THE SPAMCOP TEAM

The Reply-To email address is verification_teamss12@yahoo.com.hk, originating IP is 203.59.222.34.

43.gs: massive Google SERPs poisoning

I can't tell if this is accidental or deliberate, but there are a whole bunch of spam entries in Google for the 43.gs domain as you can see from this search.

It looks like some sort of redirect or copy, but the odd thing is that the 43.gs subdomain actually points to the legitimate server.

For example, ethviumvthvie.43.gs resolves as 198.246.98.21 which belongs to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). For some reason, the CDC server accepts requests for ethviumvthvie.43.gs as a request to display the genuine website.

As a result, Google has about 3.2 million results for 43.gs subdomains, all of which are duplicates of existing sites.

It looks like 43.gs offers some sort of legitimate URL shortening service based on subdomain names rather than the more common tinurl/bit.ly. Have the bad guys found a way to use this to their advantage? Are they suddenly going to switch traffic to somewhere bad?

43.gs is showing a small bump in traffic recently, perhaps as a result of this?

Presumably there is a way of telling your web server to reject this kind of request.

Really pathetic SpamCop.net webmail phish

Probably the most pathetic phish ever - the bad guys nicely provide a space in the email for you to put your username and password and then email it back. Combined with a fairly vague grasp of the English language, then it's hard to see that this would fool anyone at all.

From: "SpamCop Webmaster online" <spamcop.net.webmaster@mchsi.com>
Date: Tue, July 14, 2009 4:11 pm
Cc: recipient list not shown:;
Priority: Normal

Dear SpamCop Webmail online Email Account Owner,

Important notice, harmful virus was detected in your account which can be harmful to our subscriber unit.You are to enter your Username and Password here {____________, __________} to enable us set in an anti virus in your user account to clear up this virus. we do need your co-operation in this, Providing us with this information we enable us insert in your account an anti virus machine for clean up.

We are sorry for the inconveniences this might have cost you. Failure to do this, we are sorry to let you know that your account will be deleted immediately to prevent it from arming our subscriber unit.

Thank you for using SpamCop Webmail,
We are glad at your service,
SpamCop Webmaster online.

Originating IP is an open proxy at 200.65.129.2.

Korea DDOS - run for the hills!

The recent DDOS attacks against Korean and US government sites is well known, with calls for reprisals ranging from "cyber-attacks" to the occasional nutjob suggesting that real bombs are used.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the C&C server for the botnet carrying out the attack may well be in the UK. So perhaps we can expect a rush of malformed packets and/or Tomahawk cruise missiles heading the the UK soon..

via

Phorm: hahahahah

With a bit of luck, it appears that Phorm may be going down the toilet, as BT announce that they are not going to deploy Phorm's deep packet inspection technology. More at the BBC News site.

With a bit of luck, Phorm's share price will end up as a penny stock very soon.

Domain scam: ntwifinetwork.com / js-wifi.cn

The old Chinese domain scam has been around for years, but these guys are getting lazy because they haven't changed their domains for months, this is esentially unchanged from April.

Subject: Domain Dispute and Registration
From: "Sunny"
Date: Thu, July 2, 2009 4:07 am

To whom it may concern: 2009-7-2

We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,

Last week we received a formal application submited by Justin Lin who wanted to use the keyword "REDACTED" to register the Internet Brand and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn/.hk/ .asia/ domain names.

After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. We aren¡¯t sure whether you have any relation with him. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his registration, but if we do not get your company¡¯s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve his company's application

In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.



Yours sincerely

Sunny

Checking Department

Tel: 86 513 8532 1087
Fax: 86 513 8532 2065
Email:Sunny@ntwifinetwork.com
Website: www.js-wifi.cn

Our File No.:2272363

Originating IP is 122.193.216.10.

As ever, legitimate domain registrars do not send out this type of email because they are NOT responsible for this activity. Sometimes the Chinese domains get registered, sometimes they are ALREADY registered, and often they never get registered. But before you panic and pay money to these scammers, consider this: there are hundreds of top-level domains in the world. Do you really want to buy your domain for all of them? The answer is probably "no".

The best advice is to ignore this email completely.

%SI_subj: miserable spam failure

Possibly one of the most miserable spam failures I have ever seen - the idiot spammer somehow forgot to populate the % fields with actual data. It just goes to reinforce that spammers are stupid.

Subject: %SI_subj
From: "Lily Lovett"
Date: Tue, June 30, 2009 2:47 pm

You don’t need to %SI3_rnd10
rod’s %SI3_rnd11 and %SI3_rnd12 %SI3_rnd13’ jokes!

This is a %SI3_rnd14 for
%SI3_rnd15 your
%SI3_rnd16! It will
%SI3_rnd17 in seconds after she %SI3_rnd18 and %SI3_rnd19 as good as if it was
a %SI3_rnd20 rod!

No more jokes – you will always get %SI3_rnd21 and moans! The huge pack
costs less than 30 %SI3_rnd22!

%SI3_rnd23 can be a %SI3_rnd24! No one will know about your %SI3_rnd25!

%SI3_rnd26 now and save more than $10 regardless of
your order’s size!

The hypertext link goes to %SI_link3 rather than a valid address.

Presumably this is a penile enhancement product. By the looks of it, the spammer you do with an intelligence enhancement product.

Password masking facepalm

A bizarre shot in the security vs usability argument, as reported by El Reg: Masked passwords must go which reports on research saying that masked passwords are more trouble than they are worth.

A key bit of the argument? "Shoulder surfing is largely a phantom problem".. umm yeah, because people's passwords usually just show as blobs or stars so there's no point. If your damned password comes up as plaintext then you can betcha that it WILL be a problem.

Facepalm