The Scammer Responds an epilogue by John Hargrave Three things happened after that fateful day. 1) The scammer responded to Jeff's e-mail by sending him a virus: Date: Mon, 17 May 11:28:43 -0800 The file "attach" was the W32.Beagle virus, which is easily caught by Norton AntiVirus. It would have been easily caught by a third-grader with brain damage. It was a pretty lame attack, but it did verify that the scammer had received the package. 2) Next, the scammer orchestrated a denial of service attack on www.p-p-p-powerbook.com, the Web site that Jeff had set up to advertise the prank. While the hacker succeeded in taking down the site, this story had already spread, AIDS-like, across the Web, so it didn't really make a difference. Am I the only one that finds it strange that this hacker could organize a DoS attack? It's hard to believe that a guy who writes sentences like "acces your account with the uzername that you have and if the transaction isOk with you please accept it" could do anything more complicated than operating a salad fork. 3) Finally, and most disturbingly, Jeff was not heard from again. I personally e-mailed him for permission to run his story on ZUG, but after an initial response, I never heard from him again. All of his Web sites have come down, and he is nowhere to be found. Jeff, wherever you are, this P-P-P-Powerbook's for you. | ||||||||||||||
