$29.5 MILLION!

Wow, I was SO exicted when I saw this message in my inbox:

Dear Elias,

I crave your indulgence at this mail coming from somebody you have not know before. I decided to do this after praying over the situation. You should please consider the transaction on its content and not the fact that you have not known me before. I need not dwell on how I came by your contact information because there are many such possibilities these days.

I would like to introduce myself as Mrs. Fatima Ali, of Repulic of Benin, widow to Late Mr. Usman Ali (for Consular of the benin embassy in Madrid,Spain.I have been recently been daigonosed of Cancer of the Pelvics. I am writing from my sick bed.

There is this consignment (containg US$29.5Million cash, in US$100 bills) my husband deposited with a security company, here in Cotonou, Republic of Benin of which I am the next of kin. With my health condition and because my husband and I have no children, I am looking for a credible person to whom I will pass the right of next of kin. This person will apply to the company and request, from them, the procedure towards retrieving the consignment from them.

This is on the condition that you will take 25% of the fund for yourself, 5% used for expenses, while you will use the remaining 70% for the less previlege people in the society. This is in fulfilment of the last request of my husband: that a substantial part of the fund be used to carter for the less previleged.

If this condition is acceptable to you, you should contact me immediately with your full names and contact information so that I will send you all the documents that the company gave to my husband when the consignment was deposited. So that you will contact the company directly, and demand from them the procedure towards retrieving the consignment from their company.

I cannot predict what will be my fate by the time you wll recieve the fund, but you should please ensure that the fund is used as i have described above. I look forward to your response.

Yours,
Mrs. Fatima Ali

N/B: Pls reply to this email: fatima22@inbox.ru

virus submissions

I was surfing around McAfee's VIL and I skimmed through how they want you to submit a file for review. The last section is funny:

What NOT to Send – When using standard mail to send samples to AVERT only use floppy diskettes or CD’s. Any other media (such as ZIP Drives, Hard Drives, Full Computer Systems) will not be reviewed and will not be returned. (emphasis mine)

I can just picture it: Some guy is so fed up with his computer and all the viruses and other malware it has on it, that he just up and sends the ENTIRE MACHINE to McAfee.

The thing is, logically, the reason they put that on their site is because they have been sent entire systems before.

Ha. I found that quite humorous.

viruses for fun

have you ever wanted to get a virus just so that you can fight it off and win? :) I have. In fact, I did it today. The big huff that's going around, that I blogged about earlier (about how supposedly "Alternative browser spyware infects IE")...I went to the webpage that does this and clicked "Yes"...hehe, just to see what would happen.

Before I went I ran SpyBot S&D and Ad-Aware to make sure I was all clean...I was :).

Then I went to the page and let them try to mess my computer up. Here's the report (I think I counted correctly):

4 viruses detected right away by AVG (and either, healed, or sent to the vault...caught right away!)

14 registry changes detected by S&D (I allowed it just to see what it would do...yeah, it's a weird kind of fun)

I ran Ad-Aware and SpyBot again and they found:

Ad-Aware:
252 new objects:
3 processes
2 modules
50 registry keys
157 registry values
31 files
9 folders
(fixed 'em all)

SpyBot:

57 problems found
(fixed 'em all)

AVG actually didn't catch one virus right away, I found that out 'cause IE popped up a few pop-ups (and I wasn't even running it). The pop-ups were pretty pointless 'cause they were so small you could barely see what was in it, and it didn't change anything on my computer...not sure what guy who writes viruses can't size windows correctly...oh well. But AVG did catch the virus on my next full scan (which I manually ran right after I let the viruses install.

I'm all clean again.

Anyway, that's my fun for the day :).

holes in FF?

i read this blog about how people think there's a security hole in FireFox.

well, there isn't, the security hole would be in the dummy's head who clicks "Yes" or "Install" when Java tells them "Warning - Security" and "Publisher Authenticity Cannot Be Verified" and "The security certificate was issued by a company that is not trusted" and "The Security Certificate has expired or is not yet valid". Let me give you a tip: If you see a popup window that asks you a question, first of all, READ ALL OF IT. Second, if it says things like that one did, DON'T DO IT! Really, you don't need to be that desperate to have a Java applet run!

see also:
The blog entry here

I love the quote in this write-up:

"Maybe we should have a gate on the Internet saying 'you must be at least this smart to ride on this network.'"

That's FYI from E.