[colug-432] "Interesting" Phone Call

[Angelo McComis]

I had the same call. I asked "which computer since there are 4 here". He
says it doesn't matter. ???

The guy had thick Hindi accent. I asked where he was calling from. He said
New Jersey. I asked where in NJ and he tells me a city. I pulled up Google
Earth and Yelp and located some Indian restaurants in the area. Asked if he
goes there for lunch. Asked if his office is by the big park. If he ever
goes to the park. I also pulled some local news. There was a big apartment
complex fire. Asked if he saw it on tv.

Never did go to his website. Told him I was typing it in (I wasn't). And
kept asking him questions while I was waiting for the site to come up.

I think (hope) I made a nice dent in his call stats for the day.


On Jun 22, 2012, at 3:16 PM, Chris Embree <cembree at ez-as.net> wrote:

I saw a video of exactly what you're describing.  The guy was fast enough
to spin up a Win VM and play along for a while.  They of course wanted to
charge him for the service. ;)

You can probably find it on YouTube.  I forget where I saw the link... I am
not your google monkey ;)  or !LMGTFY

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 4:03 PM, Rick Troth <rmt at casita.net> wrote:

> May I quote you on this?
>
> I'm giving a talk next week on SSL.  It will include "trust models"
> and will lead to PGP and SSH and stuff like that.
>
> One of the points will be "water cooler leaks", ie: that the biggest
> security holes are human.
>
> This story is just too juicy to pass up!
>
> -- Rick; <><
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 3:55 PM,  <jep200404 at columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> > I got an "interesting" phone this afternoon from someone who
> > claimed that my Microsoft Windows computer was sending them
> > messages with passwords and other nifty secrets, and that they
> > were calling to help me remove the bad software that sending
> > the secrets. He asked if I was in front my computer. I asked
> > if the problem was due specifically to MS Windows, and he
> > confirmed yes. When I said that I did not have a Windows
> > computer, he said he must have the wrong number and hung up.
> > He had a south asian accent.
> >
> > When he asked if I was in front of my computer, I think he was
> > going to have me go to some web site that would take over
> > my computer under the guise of "helping me".
> >
> > If I had been thinking quicker, I would have booted Knoppix on
> > a computer with no hard drive, then play along. With more
> > preparation, wireshark, honeypots, and friends would be fun.
> > A fun question _before_ visiting the sucker web site would
> > be to ask what my IP address is (since they are getting
> > messages from my computer) and how they got from my IP address
> > to my phone number.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > colug-432 mailing list
> > colug-432 at colug.net
> > http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432
>
>
>
> --
> -- R;   <><
> '::1, sweet ::1'
>
> _______________________________________________
> colug-432 mailing list
> colug-432 at colug.net
> http://lists.colug.net/mailman/listinfo/colug-432
>

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