The Ethics of Humanity

[LoneBear]

Humanity at its finest...

I got this email on the 3rd... basically "bitcoin extortion"... this guy is such an idiot, it is almost laughable. Notice the "cold reading" style with NO specifics. My comments in angle brackets <>.

Hello,

I am a spyware software developer. Your account has been hacked by me in the summer of 2018.
<The "account" claimed to be hacked is an email alias on the server--not even a real account.>

I understand that it is hard to believe, but here is my evidence (I sent you this email from your account).
(The message headers show "Aaron896Smith @yahoo.jp" as the sender, with a faked "from" address to match the "to" address. Apparently knows nothing about email protocol. Reported him to Yahoo.com for extortion, but they would not accept the complaint as yahoo.jp is a different company, and I cannot read Japanese to find the correct complaint address.)

The hacking was carried out using a hardware vulnerability through which you went online (Cisco router, vulnerability CVE-2018-0296).
<Don't use any Cisco routers... even if I did, they are a separate piece of hardware that does not give access to connected computers--it just routes packets.>

I went around the security system in the router, installed an exploit there. When you went online, my exploit downloaded my malicious code (rootkit) to your device. This is driver software, I constantly updated it, so your antivirus is silent all time.
<Rootkits can only be installed via the "root" account, not an email alias... duh>

Since then I have been following you (I can connect to your device via the VNC protocol). That is, I can see absolutely everything that you do, view and download your files and any data to yourself. I also have access to the camera on your device, and I periodically take photos and videos with you.
<VNC is not installed on the server, nor does a CPU card in a rack in Texas have a camera on it.>

At the moment, I have harvested a solid dirt... on you... I saved all your email and chats from your messangers. I also saved the entire history of the sites you visit.
<Being a web server, it does not have an email client, nor a chat client... heck, it does not even have a browser!>

I note that it is useless to change the passwords. My malware update passwords from your accounts every times.
<Email aliases don't have passwords>

I know what you like hard funs (adult sites). Oh, yes .. I'm know your secret life, which you are hiding from everyone. Oh my God, what are your like... I saw THIS ... Oh, you dirty naughty person ...
<As if you can hide a "secret life" on the Internet, with spyware everywhere...>

I took photos and videos of your most passionate funs with adult content, and synchronized them in real time with the image of your camera. Believe it turned out very high quality!
<Neat trick, since there is no camera... even it if did, it must have one heck of a focal plane to take pictures of someone 2000 miles away!>

So, to the business! I'm sure you don't want to show these files and visiting history to all your contacts.

Transfer $923 to my Bitcoin cryptocurrency wallet: 17EuB8AmyBm81FgCovdr6huCCoSzv2S7nP Just copy and paste the wallet number when transferring. If you do not know how to do this - ask Google.
<The whole message is a scam and this is nothing but extortion.>

My system automatically recognizes the translation. As soon as the specified amount is received, all your data will be destroyed from my server, and the rootkit will be automatically removed from your system. Do not worry, I really will delete everything, since I am 'working' with many people who have fallen into your position. You will only have to inform your provider about the vulnerabilities in the router so that other hackers will not use it.

Since opening this letter you have 48 hours. If funds not will be received, after the specified time has elapsed, the disk of your device will be formatted, and from my server will automatically send email and sms to all your contacts with compromising material.

I advise you to remain prudent and not engage in nonsense (all files on my server).

Good luck!

Of course, this was repeated daily with an increasing bitcoin price. I just removed the alias, since I wasn't using it anyway.

If your email does support aliases (alternate names for email), it is good practice to make up one for every social media site you register at. It makes it much easier to identify the source of spam and email scams like this one... based on the alias used, there is only one site it could have come from, and I've reported it there.

This guy is such an idiot, his email actually shows up on "humor" sites...
https://hidebox.org/mail/humor-humor-3281505447

But it just goes to show where "humanity" has now gone...

[Ilkka]

I had related extortion email as well few months ago. It was written in bad finnish language and was apparently sent from my email to my email, which made me somewhat alarmed, but when it read some stuff about them filming me when I dont have cameras anywhere only microphone I knew it was a scam and deleted the message. Then later in the news it said that other people had gotten the same email and instructed to delete it. Also in that email timestamp was all wrong several hours in the future, when I first saw it.

[LoneBear]

It was written in bad finnish language and was apparently sent from my email to my email, which made me somewhat alarmed

There is an option on email clients to either "view headers" or "view message source." If you do that, you'll get a bunch of information--including who actually sent the email and the path it took to get to you.

Email protocol allows you to specify the "to" and "from" address fields to be anything you want--it is not validated or verified. Never consider them to be valid--look at the message headers.

[Ilkka]

I tried to look for some more info on that email but I couldn't get anything, it is a very old email account too. It said my account name in the thing that would show like "john.doe@email" it really did show only my account in that one too, with future timestamp.

[animus]

Humanity at its finest...

I got this email on the 3rd... basically "bitcoin extortion"... this guy is such an idiot, it is almost laughable.

Hard to fool someone who knows how things really work.

I had a bit more trouble making sense of the junk emails and my provider's sms in the last months. But they were of a different kind and it was not really about money. It was obvious that they were junk and I ignored them in a technical sense but took them serious symbolically. There was a little bit too much of synchronicity between my dreams, thoughts, actions and the spam I received. Makes me wonder if the scripts in my dreams are actually coming from me or if I am picking up something external and am dancing to somebody else's tune. I have to say, it is hard to learn about your own intuition, let it alone trust it, if you don't know if the information comes from your own soul or spirit or from Nature or from other entities, human or not... And even though I consciously dropped the question of who I am for the time being, the dreams and spam don't seem to stop.

[tymeflyz]

just....WOW ..hahaha

dear sir
my naked zebra porn group wood be offended by baboon and shark porn.
Please delete me from your list so my mom wont see these.

tank youb
I.M.Rube.
p.s. would you be interested in tea-kettle furrie pron?


I dont know WHY i keep thinking they cant get any dumber?!