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Pros weigh in on phishing the White House
Just before Anthony Scaramucci's 15 minutes -- er, I mean 10 days -- of White House fame were up, a man in the UK (who imaginatively calls himself "Email Prankster") had some choice words with him via email. Nothing weird there you think? Except that he did it while posing as former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Not that getting "the Mooch's" metaphorical goat was expected to be difficult. Especially after he went ballistic on New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza for merely mentioning his enemies. No, the remarkable thing was that Scaramucci was one of many the prankster fooled among Trump's totally cyber-savvy and not-chaotic White House cabinet of curiosities.
Nigerian email scammer stung by his own malware
With more and more internet users now wise to email scams, scammers are utilizing increasingly advanced techniques to stay one step ahead of their targets. A pair of researchers recently stumbled on a new a "wire-wire" technique that earned a 30-strong group of Nigerian scammers as much as $3 million a year, at least until one prominent member accidentally infected himself with his own malware. IEEE Spectrum reports that SecureWorks security experts Joe Stewart and James Bettke were alerted to this new kind of attack in February after they stumbled upon a keylogger that was sending unsecured data to an open web server. They watched for months as the ring collected keystrokes and screenshots of important documents from unsuspecting users. But because the malware was running on the scammers' computers too, it also gave them an important insight into who was behind the thefts, the tools that were used, the names of the affected businesses and the sums of money being transferred to third-party accounts.
Brilliant PS3 Slim ad loses Nigerian scam reference, internet rumors now known to have started WWI
Turns out not everyone was amused by Sony's tongue-in-cheek PlayStation 3 Slim ad about internet rumors -- just ask the Nigerian government. The line in question, "you can't believe everything you read on the internet, otherwise I'd be a Nigerian millionaire by now," apparently caused a bit of a stir, and the local authorities demanded the company pull the commercial. It's now been replaced in the company's Viddler account with a slightly altered version that claims online FUD is "how World War One got started." Someone should tell Sony Director of Rumor Confirmation Kevin Butler that there's a certain assassinated Austrian Archduke who would beg to differ. Revised video after the break, and just for kicks, we found the old video on YouTube for comparison. [Via Joystiq]
Nigerian firm sues Negroponte, OLPC for patent infringement
Just months after a slew of OLPC XOs made their way into Nigeria, a Nigerian-owned company is filing suit against Nicholas Negroponte and the OLPC Association for patent infringement. Lagos Analysis and subsidiary LANCOR filed the lawsuit on November 22nd in Nigeria, claiming that the aforementioned parties willfully and illegally reverse engineered its keyboard driver source codes. Turns out, LANCOR makes its ends by selling region specific-based keyboards that allow for direct access inputting of "accents, symbols and diacritical marks during regular typing," and sure enough, the XO's board looks mighty similar to those offered up by the plaintiff. Additionally, the outfit is in the process of "filing a similar lawsuit against OLPC in a United States Federal Court," so we'd recommend snagging an XO or two before Nik Neg and company are forced to inflate prices to pay off those highfalutin lawyers.[Image courtesy of Konyin and Digital Crusader]
