[LINK] Part time job offer - what is the scam?

[steve jenkin]

Rick Welykochy wrote on 9/1/07 9:22 PM:
> We've all heard of spam emails offer some sort of job scam.
> What do Linkers think the scam is here?

Recruitment of "Money Mules".  See:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_mule>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_computer>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet>

A comment in another forum:
<http://www.phishtank.com/blog/2006/11/10/money-mules-laundering-out-the-phish-smell>

A very good set of slides from a security expert (Peter Gutman
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/>):
<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/blended.pdf>

He discusses the convergence of SPAM and hacking... It's now a single
community.

The AusCERT 2005 Security Survey stated in late 2004 "the hackers turned
pro".
That's the most important & alarming Internet news I've seen since 1992
when I heard about 'the web'.
We're not up against a bunch of pimply hacker 'leets' anymore, but real
organised crime...
The rate of increase of attacks is stunning - 1500% year on year in some
areas - and not coming off low bases.

Search for "Happy New Year!" virus - there were 3200+ short-lived
variants in the first 65 hours.
It also is supposed to have accounted for 1 in *8* email messages
globally at its height.
It was a planned "zero-day" attack.
If your organisation relied only on good virus scanners - then you lost.
 The viruses streaming straight past your expensive virus pattern
matching systems...
  It will continue to infect systems until all those people on holidays
have opened their mail.

McAfee Avert Labs claims *271,000* different types of malware. I'm
hoping that not just a count of their virus "signatures".
<http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/54924.html>

If you run MS-Windows, there is no such thing as 'Safe Internet Banking' :-(

HTH
sj
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
> Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 19:04:38 +0900
> From: Esteban Borges <Simone at c2i.net>
> To: rick at praxis.com.au
> Subject: Part time job offer
>
> <snip>
> contacts below:
>
> e-mail: esteban.borges at hotmail.com
>
> Best Regards,
> Esteban Borges.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>
>


-- 
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://www.canb.auug.org.au/~sjenkin