Horizontal Perspective 横顾天下

A few months ago I wrote about the general panic and hysteria whipped up by the WHO’s declaration then of the H1N1 swine flu a global pandemic (see Fake Tamiflu And H1N1 Hysteria), the picture has changed somewhat. The disease has continued to spread rapidly in all communities, but the number of deaths had remained low. Unfortunately, with the onset of winter in the northern hemisphere, the rate of fatality is expected to rise dramatically. Already in the past 4 weeks the number of infected has gone up drastically. With vaccines still in short supply, fear and panic had risen yet again, particularly amongst those in the temperate region.

Capitalising on the now much heighten sense of self-preservation, many websites in U.S. are peddling swine flu nostrums. There’s the healing gels that “create a barrier between you and the potentially deadly virus now spreading across the globe.” And the magical “ionic silver that kills every known pathogen, germ, bacteria, virus or fungus within six minutes”. Yet another website trumpets “Spray Swine Flu . . . Gone . . . with ionic silver on your hands”. It is doubtful that most of these offerings have any basis to their claims. (more…)

The head of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has stopped banking online after nearly falling for a phishing attempt. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he recently came “just a few clicks away from falling into a classic Internet phishing scam” after receiving an email that appeared to be from his bank. Though he stopped before handing over any sensitive information, the incident put an end to Mueller’s online banking.

It looked pretty legitimate.  They had mimicked the emails that the bank would ordinarily send out to its customers; they’d mimicked them very well. …
I  consider online banking very safe but just in my household, we don’t use it.

In phishing scams, criminals send spam emails to their victims, hoping to trick them into entering sensitive information such as usernames and passwords at fake Web sites. It has evolved into a big problem, not just for banks, but for online retailers and even providers of consumer Web applications such as Facebook and Yahoo.

In June, the Anti-Phishing Working Group counted nearly 50,000 active phishing Web sites, the second-highest number it has ever recorded. And just late last week, criminals posted tens of thousands of passwords belonging to Microsoft Live Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo accounts online. They are all thought to have been stolen via phishing.

Mueller’s FBI has had some success in going after phishers. On Wednesday it announced that it and the Egyptian authorities have arrested 100 people in what they’re calling ‘the largest international phishing case ever conducted’ as part of a wide-scale investigation called Operation Phish Phry. The criminals used phishing to get access to hundreds of bank accounts, stealing $1.5 million. The international phishing ring had a significant impact on two banks and caused huge headaches for hundreds, perhaps thousands of bank customers.

“Far too little attention has been paid to cyber threats and their consequences,” Mueller said. “Intruders are reaching into our networks every day looking for valuable information. Unfortunately they’re finding it. “

The number of Internet scammers offering fake versions of the anti-swine flu drug Tamiflu has surpassed those selling counterfeit Viagra, reports CNN.

Since the H1N1 swine flu was declared a global pandemic last month, there has been an increase in the number of Web sites and junk emails offering Tamiflu for sale. ‘Every Web site that used to sell Viagra is now selling Tamiflu. We are pretty sure that the same people are making the Tamiflu as are making the Viagra,’ said Director of Policy for the UK’s Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

We know that half the Viagra on the Internet is fake and half the Tamiflu that’s around will probably be fake as well.

The fake drugs could have anything from sugar to another drug that’s similar, or often it’s a lower dose of the drug, or even rat poison.

I am truly glad that Singapore did not manifest the panic and hysteria evident elsewhere. This is obviously the direct result of the Ministry of Health’s assurance that the stockpile of Tamiflu locally is adequate for the anticipated need, and that if necessary, MOH will procure sufficient H1N1 vaccines for all. Whether it is necessary to vaccinate everyone or not, the resolve expressed, without a doubt, put at ease any concern of the people living and working here.Thus Singaporeans will probably not be moved by these dubious online Tamiflu offerings. And that’s a good thing, for bogus medicines supplied over the Internet is shaping up to be a major killer. I am sorely tempted to advocate putting these egregious criminals on trial for Premeditated Murder, but that’s another story for some other day. (Sigh).

Source :
• Wired Mag – Apocalypse Not: Behind the Swine Flu Hysteria
• CNN : Fake Tamiflu ‘out-spams Viagra on Web‘

According to security firm McAfee the average web surfer gets around 70 spam messages a day.

In a recent experiment (see BBC Science report Spam experiment overloads inboxes), 50 people from around the world surfed the web without spam filters for a month. The results suggest US users are the most targeted, with Brazil, Italy, Mexico and the UK next in line. Germany appears to be the least attractive. Around one in 12 messages were phishing emails aimed at getting the receiver to hand over sensitive information like passwords and bank details.

Remember the golden rules,

• Do not click on any links in an email sent from someone you don’t know, (pay attention to the email address of the sender)
• If it sounds dodgy or too good to be true, it probably is.
• Never give out passwords, even to your bank. (Legitimate Banks and businesses do not conduct security related operation over the internet)

The original report at Yahoo!

New report identifies dangerous Web domains

By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology WriterWed Jun 4, 7:09 AM ET

When surfing the Internet for safe Web sites, not all domains are equal.

Companies that assign addresses for Web sites appear to be cutting corners on security more when they assign names in certain domains than in others, according to a report to be released Wednesday by antivirus software vendor McAfee Inc.

McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are “.hk” (Hong Kong), “.cn” (China) and “.info” (information). Of all “.hk” sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of “.cn” sites and 11.7 percent of “.info” sites that way. (more…)

Nowadays my email inbox is stuffed with some 20 to 60 SPAM, Scam and general junk messages daily. I rely on the MailScanner on my mail-server and Thunderbird (my mail transfer agent program) to collectively filter the fluff off so I ‘see only the good stuff’. Occasionally a few would slip through that look good enough to fool the unwary netizens. Fortunately the Internet Mail Standard (technically RFC-821 for envelope information and RFC-822 for message text format) ensures that the delivery passage information of any email is embedded within the mail itself. We only need to know where to look and how to interpret the data to sort the fakes from the genuine. (more…)