7/11/2003
Corporations Thrashing Indian Workers Now :.Question: When does a yak and a rice paddy look like paradise? Answer: When you're an Indian who winds up getting the job of a fired American or European IT worker. Oh yeah, for those of you who think these "jobs" are coming back to the U.S., think again. Indian IT workers make $160 to $300 per month. Think about it. What do you do? There are people in countries that most Americans have never heard of who are not only qualified, but willing to do your job for under $1 per hour (in some cases, much less than $1 per hour). Have a nice day! Outsourcing tech jobs to India has caused turmoil for workers in the United States and Europe. But it seems it's causing turmoil for Indians, as well.
An estimated 50,000 young English-speaking Indians who work in call centers here are exposed to a host of health problems. They are usually in their early 20s, just out of college and up all night answering tech calls.
Because of the time difference between India and the United States, the work day for these Indians starts late in the evening and extends until dawn. Such odd work hours have brought on a host of health problems including digestive diseases, hair loss, back pain and stress.
posted by Kevin at 2:58 AM
U.S. Stealing Oil From Iraq? :.With the help of Kuwait!? On May 25, while scanning the Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program images pipelined into his desktop from 450 miles in orbit, Hank Brandli skidded at a nighttime photo of Iraq. It looked familiar. But not exactly.
Brandli retrieved another DMSP image he'd archived from May 3. He compared the two. The most recent photo showed a blazing corridor of light running the length of Kuwait, south to north, all the way to the Iraqi border. The image wasn't there on May 3.
"It's going right up to Iraq's oil fields," says the retired Air Force colonel from his home in Palm Bay. "Maybe I'm full of s---. Maybe all they're doing is building a highway to put in McDonald's and sell hamburgers. But why go that way? I think we're in bed with Kuwait. I think we're pumping oil out of Iraq to pay for this war."Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 2:40 AM
7/10/2003
Rumsfeld: Iraq War Not About Weapons of Mass Destruction :.International terrorists are running the United States government. This regime has no legitimacy and easily represents the most dangerous element in world politics: The United States didn't declare war on Iraq because of new evidence of banned weapons, U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.
Rumsfeld said the U.S. declared war because it saw existing evidence of Iraqi arms programs in "a dramatic new light" following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
posted by Kevin at 10:17 AM
Handful of Companies Moving Towards Owning Every Stage of Global Food System :.Public opposition to genetically modified foods has been a stumbling block to the commercialisation of GM crops and animals. The agri-biotech industry is hoping GM foods with "consumer-friendly" traits might overcome some of this opposition.
But they have also been running big advertising campaigns in an attempt to convince the public that GM foods will be required to "feed the world". These are the kinds of predictable arguments being aired at the International Congress of Genetics in Melbourne.
In reality, the new genetic technologies will largely be used to feed the power and profits of agri-food corporations, and they are more likely to exacerbate - rather than alleviate - the problems of widespread hunger and malnutrition in the Third World.
posted by Kevin at 9:48 AM
7/9/2003
Wal-Mart Cancels RFID Trial :.Pay close attention because this is an excellent example of how public opinion is managed. The firestorm of pissed people stopped this from going into Wal-Mart... for the moment. RFID is going to be everywhere. Do not doubt it for one second. But because so many people freaked out so fast over this, They realize that it's a no-go...for the moment. We will probably enter a "cooling off" period, as the people behind the RFID wait for angry consumers to forget about this. Then, guess what? After some period of time... It's back. When it comes back, it will be back with a vengeance, and it will probably be legislated into existence for some bogus reason or another. When corporations realize they have hit an obstacle with public opinion, they simply pay the whores on Capital Hill and the various federal agencies, and that's it. The next thing you know, it's, "RFID is for the children," or, "RFID protects you from the terrorists." If their lips are moving, they're lying. Don't forget it: Wal-Mart Stores has unexpectedly canceled testing for an experimental wireless inventory control system, ending one of the first and most closely watched efforts to bring controversial radio frequency identification technology to store shelves in the United States.
posted by Kevin at 2:43 PM
The Apocalypse in Commercial Real Estate :. (mp3 audio, 1.15MB) Things are very bad in the commercial real estate market. So many businesses have laid off so many people, so fast, that there is a massive glut of vacant commercial real estate space in virtually every part of the country...except in Washington DC, where the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security need more room to grow. Ask yourself this: Where is the economy going if so much commercial property is sitting empty? In my area (Orange County, California), ALL commercial buildings I see have for sale or for lease signs out front. All of them. I thought it was only that bad in my area. I didn't imagine that the commercial market could be that bad all over. Now this is where one could say, "It's not that bad, it's worse." Think about the individuals and organizations who owe money on those buildings! Vacant buildings don't pay off the loans that were taken out to buy those buildings. The wheels are coming off the cart. Somebody please tell me how this thing can possibly stay up. Related: Unemployment Rises Again, 20 Year High :.The number of out-of-work Americans continuing to draw jobless benefits [read commentary below] jumped by 87,000 to 3.8 million for the work week ending June 28, the most recent period for which that information is available. That represented the highest level since Feb. 26, 1983, and suggested that not a lot of hiring is taking place.Related: Cryptogon Reader Commentary on UnemploymentThe following was sent in by BF, and I agree with it 100%: The un-employment rates quoted by local, state and federal governments are bogus because they are based upon "applications" for un-employment benefits. Once an un-employed person runs out of benefits, they don't get counted as the un-employed but they still are. During the great depression un-employment was around 30%, it's estimated that we are in the mid twenties now. Some 60% of last years collage grads have returned to their parents home, jobless with a student loan to pay off.
Recent statements that we may be returning to a recession mode seem to have missed the point that we have yet to get out of the recession... yet the administration says "the fundamentals are sound"... sounds more like bullshit to me!Related: Original NPR Audio :.Commercial Real Estate Slump
July 5, 2003
Host Steve Inskeep looks at the slump in the commercial real estate market as a reflection of the lagging economy nationwide. The one bright spot seems to be downtown Washington, D.C., where the presence of the federal government keeps the economy strong.
posted by Kevin at 1:51 PM
Euro Currency to Get RFID Chips :.If embedded in the euro, the chips could make it possible to track information such as when and where transactions take place, according to Paul Lee of Deloitte Research in London.
RFID technology involves a minuscule chip and antenna, which would be implanted in the bank notes, and a reader similar to those used with bar codes, only much smaller, Lee said. Though it might be used simply to identify the note's serial number, it would also be possible to add more data.
"There is a worry in our field as to how these things will be used, given the lack of coherent privacy regulations," said Dan Moriz, staff technologist for San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital watchdog organization.
"It would be easy to establish a system where intelligence agencies track how money is spent.
posted by Kevin at 12:31 PM
Saudi Business Group Threatens to Implicate Four "Western Banks" in 9/11 Lawsuit :.We go down, you go down: A leading Islamic business group has warned four major Western banks they could be implicated in a multi-trillion-dollar lawsuit filed by families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the group said Sunday.
The legal team for Dallah Al-Baraka Holding and its owner Saleh Kamel has notified the four unnamed Western banks that their names could be added to the list of defendants implicated in the lawsuit, Dallah said in a statement.
Dallah's banking subsidiary, Al-Baraka Investment and Development (ABID), and Kamel are among more than 100 Saudi organisations, charities, businessmen and well-known personalities sued by the families.
"Saleh and Dallah Al-Baraka's legal team expects that the court will agree to drop their clients' names from the lawsuit," the statement said.
"However ... in the unlikely event that Saleh and Al-Baraka are not dropped from the lawsuit, the Western banks will also be added to the list of Saudi banks as defendants under the legal procedure known as 'third party lawsuit' which gives defendants the right to name other parties," it warned.
The statement said that "based on various reports, the banks had provided services to the alleged terrorists or their assistants," and accordingly can be held liable under the "aggressive legal theory" put forward by the plaintiffs' lawyers.
posted by Kevin at 12:05 PM
The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything That Moves :.Tying it all together: The cameras are already in place. The computer code is being developed at a dozen or more major companies and universities. And the trial runs have already been planned.
Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch. Not in the far-off, dystopian future. But here, and soon. More: Existing Surveillance Cameras Will Be UsedIn Pentagon Developing System to Track Every Vehicle in a City, I wrote, "Anyone who thinks this technology is headed for a foreign battlefield better think again. Take a look around your freeways and intersections. If you live near a couple of hundred thousand other people, or more, you will notice that the video camera infrastructure is already in place and operational. Once they add the new software to the backend systems....well, that, as they say, will be that." I hate it when I'm right. From the Village Voice article: As currently configured, the old-line cameras speckled throughout every major city aren't that much of a privacy concern. Yes, there are lenses everywhere�several thousand just in Manhattan. But they see so much, it's almost impossible for snoops to sift through all the footage and find what's important.
CTS would coordinate the cameras, gathering their views in a single information storehouse. The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to "track everything that moves."
posted by Kevin at 7:32 AM
Are Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden Running PROMIS? :.Remember the recent story by Mike Ruppert indicating that the Bushes were about to be taken down? Well, that might be something to keep in mind as you read the rest of this. Some very old and very heavy stuff is creeping out about Bush Senior. I quite literally can't believe that the PROMIS software story is alive again. Not only is it alive, but it appears to be behind the resignation of Homeland Security official, Paul Redmond, who was looking into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden happened to come into possession of PROMIS. In the case of Saddam, the information was leading to Bush Senior as the probable source. Immediately following Redmond's resignation, George W. Bush put out a $25 million contract on Saddam Hussein: AMERICA'S top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the SUNDAY EXPRESS claimed this weekend.
The software is said to enable the two most wanted men in the world to avoid capture because it can pinpoint every move in the global manhunt.
Redmond's departure last week was accepted "without discussion" by President Bush, the man who had brought the spy catcher out of retirement to conduct the investigation.
Hours after Redmond had cleared his desk, Bush ordered a GBP 25million bounty on Saddam's head. He wants Saddam "dead or alive" and the same goes for bin Laden. Already Bush has agreed to either man forgoing a trial and being shot after interrogation. The official reason given for Redmond's abrupt departure was "health reasons." But stunned colleagues in the Homeland Security department in Washington, where Redmond had his office, insist the former Associate Director of the CIA was in perfect health. His departure has led to intense speculation that he may have begun to uncover embarrassing details of how the software came into the hands of Saddam and bin Laden.
Documents obtained by the respected International Currency Review, a London-based newsletter for the financial community, allege that the software was provided for Saddam on the authority of President Bush's father when he was in the White House - a time when relations between Iraq and Washington were close during Baghdad's war with Iran. The Review's publisher, Christopher Story, a former financial adviser to Lady Thatcher, said: "The documents are extremely sensitive and raise some very serious questions."
He confirmed that they had originally been in the possession of Barzan alTakriti, Saddam's half-brother, when he was managing Saddam's estimated GBP 40billion fortune.
A Paris intelligence source said the documents were copied by operatives of DGSE, the French intelligence service, earlier this year when al-Takriti made a visit to several banks in Geneva.
He is now in American hands, one of the key names on the famous "deck of cards" list.
Shortly after the documents reached Washington on the eve of the war with Iraq, President Bush brought Paul Redmond out of retirement.
Redmond was a legendary CIA spy catcher who helped unmask some of the most infamous spies before he retired in 1998.
He was told to investigate how Robert Hanssen, the renegade FBI computer specialist who was a longtime Soviet agent, had handed over a copy of the software - known as Promis - to his KGB controllers for $ 2million.
Hanssen, now serving a life sentence, has yet to reveal all he knows about how the KGB sold on a copy of the software to Osama bin Laden for $ 4million shortly before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.
"But until Redmond's abrupt resignation, increasingly the documents relating to Saddam's use of Promis - and his relationship with President Bush's father - were what Redmond had begun to focus on", said a source close to the departed spy catcher.
posted by Kevin at 7:17 AM
China Doing Development Work on Software Running on NSA Supercomputers :.The security agency, one of many federal supercomputer users that rely on Platform's software, typically keeps the identities of its employees under tight wraps. Gabrenya, who had just joined Platform as a salesman, found the names on a list of potential customer contacts for Platform's sales team. The discovery crystallized his growing concern that the company was perhaps too lax about the national security needs of its United States government customers, in the military, intelligence and research.
"Anyone who had an account on the system could see this list," Gabrenya recalled in a recent interview. "They shouldn't be seeing this information and I shouldn't be seeing it."
What really worried him, Gabrenya said, was that Platform, although based in Markham, Ontario, maintains a software maintenance and testing operation in Beijing--which he was not sure the company had made clear enough to its American government customers.
He repeatedly raised the concerns with Platform executives, who say his fears were unfounded. In March, Gabrenya, who had previously worked for nearly 10 years as a salesman for the supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics, was let go by Platform. The company said he had not met sales goals. Gabrenya said his whistle-blowing led to his dismissal.
Gabrenya, a 42-year-old American, stressed that he had seen no evidence of espionage or other wrongdoing by Platform employees either in Canada or China. But he said that he was concerned about two possibilities, that sensitive government information was not receiving adequate protection and that the Chinese software operation could be infiltrated by foreign agents who could tamper with software being used by United States government agencies.
posted by Kevin at 5:59 AM
Cryptogon Was DownCryptogon.com just came back online after being down since 8pm (Pacific) yesterday. My web hosting company said there was a regional network outage (Calgary, Canada) and both their primary and secondary OC3s were affected.
posted by Kevin at 5:20 AM
7/8/2003
Google: Weapons of Mass DestructionGo to Google. In the search field, type: weapons of mass destructionPress the, "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. HA! Research Credit: JL Related: Setting Google Up the Bomb :.Anthony Cox describes how his spoof error page turned into a 'Google bomb' for weapons of mass destruction.Research Credit: JH
posted by Kevin at 1:40 PM
Cyberwar: Dissertation Could Be Security Threat :.Back in September of 2002, I wrote an essay entitled, Cyberwar: How Terrorists Could Defeat the U.S., and Why They Won�t (requires Acrobat Reader 5 or later). This brief essay explains how vulnerable information infrastructures are to very simple physical attacks. I intentionally removed all company names and locations of the critical assets, not because I was afraid that the information would come as any surprise to international terrorists, but because I was afraid the FBI would think I was a terrorist. A guy named Sean Gorman is completing a doctoral dissertation that deals with similar issues. Unlike my informal essay, Gorman's work isn't sanitized. It's classified: Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.
He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.
For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society.
"I'm this grad student," said Gorman, 29, amazed by his transformation from geek to cybercommando. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I'd be briefing government officials and private-sector CEOs."
Invariably, he said, they suggest his work be classified. "Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does this mean I have to redo my PhD?" he said. "They're worried about national security. I'm worried about getting my degree." For academics, there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman's case, there's a new concern: publish and perish.
"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief. "The fiber-optic network is our country's nervous system." Every fiber, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things.
"You don't want to give terrorists a road map to blow that up," he said.Sorry, old boy, but the road map is sitting on Google, out in the open. If I'm capable of hashing it out on my own, sitting around in my underwear, using nothing more sophisticated than a web browser, what would a group of international terrorists, with infinite funding and teams of engineers be able to accomplish?
posted by Kevin at 1:04 PM
Bush-linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United :.There's definitely nothing to see here. Move along: George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.
The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a "completion contract" to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down."
It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.
McDaniel confirmed that the company has security contracts with the Department of Defense, including the U.S. Army, but did not detail the nature of the work, citing security concerns. It has an ongoing line with the General Services Administration - meaning that its bids for contracts are noncompetitive - and also did security work for the Los Alamos laboratory before 1998.
Marvin P. Bush, the president's youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked.
posted by Kevin at 6:56 AM
Plans for '�40 ID Cards' in U.K. :.Under communistic fascism, ID cards are issued by the state. Under capitalistic fascism, will people have to pay for their ID cards!? I guess that's the major innovation with this iteration of "the free market." First They took us off the land, then They swindled us blind for a century or so, now that the party is just about over, They want us to pay for our own prison IDs: In a leaked letter to Cabinet ministers Home Secretary David Blunkett said he believed the case for a "universal identity card in the UK" was overwhelming, according to the Sunday Times.
The cards would carry information identifying their owner - a fingerprint, for example, or a picture of their iris or other facial characteristics, the paper reports.
Individuals would not have to carry the card at all times but would have produce it within a few days if asked to do so by police, the document says.
The letter dated 25 June was officially addressed to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, as chairman of the domestic affairs cabinet committee, said the paper.
It quotes Mr Blunkett as saying "a highly organised minority" would "campaign vocally" against the cards but that he believed the argument that ID cards would inhibit freedom was "wrong."
"We are strengthened in our liberty if our identity is protected from theft; if we are able to access the services we are entitled to; and if our community is better protected from terrorists and organised criminals," he wrote. Related: U.S. Version of a National ID Card? :.Look closely at the name on the card. Winston Smith. Does that name ring a bell? It would, if you've read 1984. From Popular Science: September 11 was quickly followed by calls from some lawmakers and business leaders for a more robust national identification system: ID cards that possess sophisticated biometric data, making them harder to forge than today's driver's licenses. Privacy advocates are strongly opposed, arguing that such cards, while enabling the government to track individuals and access personal data, would do little to separate the innocent citizen from the walking security threat. For now, the Bush administration is cool to the idea, but it's not hard to envision the Department of Homeland Security re-examining the concept if further terrorist attacks occur. More than 30 countries, from Italy to Malaysia, have already introduced "smart" ID cards. If you're eventually issued a national card, it will likely incorporate several of the technologies shown here, combined to make the card readable by both high- and low-tech devices.
posted by Kevin at 6:45 AM
Mystery Boeing Briefly Resurfaces After Disappearance :.A Boeing 727, whose sudden disappearance in Angola in May unnerved US intelligence agencies, reappeared last week in the Guinean capital Conakry before vanishing once again, British newspaper The Guardian reports.
Washington has been working with African governments in the past month in a frantic bid to hunt down the cargo plane, amid fears the aircraft could be used by terrorists in a repeat of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
The paper said the plane was seen on June 28 by a Canadian pilot, Bob Strother, in Conakry, sporting a new coat of paint and a Guinean registration number.
But Mr Strother told the paper that two letters of the plane's old tail number - N844AA - were still showing, proving the aircraft was the same Boeing that was being sought by US diplomats throughout Africa.
"There's absolutely no doubt it's the same aircraft, the old registration is clearly visible," he was quoted as saying.
"Whoever owns it must have some important friends to get it reregistered in two days: going by the book, the whole process usually takes a couple of months," he added.
"We only saw it that one time, now it's gone."I've said it once, and I'll say it again: See Compromised, by Terry Reed, for a description of operation SEASPRAY. The CIA and U.S. Army special forces run a secret air traffic control system that allows any aircraft to slip inside U.S. airspace undetected. I can hear the shrill screams of "Bullshit!" erupting from the peanut gallery. Yeah, well, that's how the real drug shipments move. Fake tail numbers. Insurance scams. Stolen aircraft. Cut out companies. Covert operations. Read that ABC News story and then decide for yourself if any of that sounds similar to what is described in Compromised. I don't know what that plane is being used for, but I am 100% sure that it's nothing good. Research Credit: pr0spero
posted by Kevin at 5:09 AM
7/7/2003
Diplomat: U.S. Knew Uranium Report Was False :.A former U.S. diplomat said Sunday he told the Bush administration that Iraq had not tried to buy uranium from Niger in the late 1990s to develop nuclear weapons.
Former Ambassador to Gabon Joseph Wilson told NBC's "Meet the Press" he informed the CIA and the State Department that such information was false months before U.S. and British officials used it during the debate that led to war.
During his State of the Union address in January, two months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, President Bush accused Iraq of trying to buy "significant quantities of uranium" from an unnamed African country. He cited British intelligence, which had published a similar report in September 2002.
"If they were referring to Niger when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, ... that information was erroneous and ... they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said.Yawn: White House Backs Off Claim on Iraqi Uranium Buy :.Nobody believed any of this nonsense, except the imbeciles flapping their gums on major network and cable TV news broadcasts: The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
posted by Kevin at 9:06 AM
RFID Confidential Documents :.Grab em' before the bozos at Auto-ID Center figure it out. Save first, read later. I have provided a temporary mirror of the Auto-ID Center confidential documents. Part 1 (11.6MB zip) and Part 2 (8.2MB zip). From the CASPIAN press release: CASPIAN asks, "How can we trust these people with our personal data?"
CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) says anyone can download revealing documents labeled "confidential" from the home page of the MIT Auto-ID Center web site in two mouse clicks.
The Auto-ID Center is the organization entrusted with developing a global Internet infrastructure for radio frequency identification (RFID). Their plans are to tag all the objects manufactured on the planet with RFID chips and track them via the Internet. Related: Who's Coming to Cryptogon to Grab the Documents?monsanto.com, verisign.com, mit.edu, schwab.com, alientechnology.com, census.gov, oracle.co.uk, dell.com, army.mil, google.com (human reader, not the googlebot), rockwellcollins.com, af.mil, boeing.com, kohls.com, uscourts.gov, ford.com, ge.com, nortelnetworks.com, vollmerpr.com, navy.mil, willab.com, deq.state.or.us, generalmills.com, microsoft.com, donruss.com, sgi.com, natinst.com, dsainc.com, statera.com, norwest.com, hitachi.net (negotiating deal to embed RFID chips in Euro banknotes), berkeley.edu, chubb.com, smithnephew.com, eds.net, match.com, conversent.net, lanl.gov, compaq.com, globeranger.com, apple.com, gsi.gov.uk, morganstanley.com, nipr.mil, epa.gov, ibm.com, nvidia.com, harvard.edu, sun.com, turner.com, pfizer.com, peoplesoft.com, ti.com
posted by Kevin at 7:40 AM
Major PayPal/E-Gold Scam Running NowThis exact scam is described here. The offending box is running Apache and is located at IP address 216.171.64.231. The imbeciles didn't secure the top directory: https://orange.srv2.com/~l45sd7o/ Notice the files related to both PayPal and E-Gold: Index of /~l45sd7o Name Last modified Size Description -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Parent Directory 05-Jul-2003 15:11 - PayPal - Verify Your..> 06-Jul-2003 03:52 - _private/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - _vti_bin/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - _vti_cnf/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - _vti_inf.html 05-Jul-2003 15:05 2k _vti_log/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - _vti_pvt/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - _vti_txt/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - aC.cGi 06-Jul-2003 05:43 1k cgi-bin/ 07-Jul-2003 05:27 - e-gold Account Login..> 06-Jul-2003 14:52 - e-gold top menu.files/ 06-Jul-2003 14:52 - i.html 06-Jul-2003 15:09 1k images/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 - index2.html 06-Jul-2003 06:01 13k login2.html 06-Jul-2003 15:26 6k menu.html 06-Jul-2003 14:52 3k postinfo.html 05-Jul-2003 15:05 2k
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apache/1.3.27 Server at orange.srv2.com Port 443It started with this email. --- BEGIN SCAM RELATED EMAIL --- Return-Path: Received: from compuserve.com (c-67-163-37-115.client.comcast.net [67.163.37.115]) by ws9.dns77.com (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h679HRQ24733 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 2003 03:17:28 -0600 Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 08:26:50 +0000 From: Verify Subject: PAYPAL - VERIFY AND UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT To: Kevin References: In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <6ALF3KAH2I9911KJ@paypal.com> Reply-To: Verify Sender: Verify MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1251 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-UIDL: Y[6"!fK6!!(^h"!4=g"!
-----Original Message----- From: Verify [mailto:verify@paypal.com] Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 1:27 AM To: Kevin Subject: PAYPAL - VERIFY AND UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT
Dear PayPal Member,
This email was sent by the PayPal server to re-verify your e-mail address and to update your profile information on PayPal. You must complete this process by clicking on the link below and entering the information from your profile. This is done for your protection --- becaurse some of our members no longer have access to their email addresses and we must verify it.
To update your profile information and access your account, click on the link below. If nothing happens when you click on the link (or if you use AOL), copy and paste the link into the address bar of your web browser.
[Link deleted]
The link will take you to our Verify Your Identity page. Fill in the appropriate fields to update your profile information and Security Questions, and click Submit. You will then be able to access your account.
Thanks for using PayPal!
Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the "Help" link in the footer of any page.
---------------------------------------------------------------- PROTECT YOUR PASSWORD
NEVER give your password to anyone and ONLY log in at https://www.paypal.com. Protect yourself against fraudulent websites by checking the URL/Address bar every time you log in. ------------------------------------------------------------------- END SCAM RELATED EMAIL --- UPDATE: The Bastards Changed Domains!Uhhhh. I got another email. This time, the scam is running on a different domain! I wonder how many machines these people have compromised??? Now it's now running on: https://KI54fT.WoRlDiSpNeTwOrK.CoM/i.CgI? XXXXX WARNING: THE WEBPAGE ON THE ABOVE URL IS A SCAM AND IS PRESENTED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THAT IS NOT PAYPAL. DO NOT ENTER YOUR INFORMATION INTO THAT FORM! XXXXX
posted by Kevin at 4:54 AM
7/6/2003
Extreme Weather Prompts Unprecedented Global Warming Alert :.In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.
In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.
The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).
posted by Kevin at 5:27 AM
|
:. Reading
Fatal
Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell
Readers will come to see
that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest"
- fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors
such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way
into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff
from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to
genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield
monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our
farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate
farms.
Friendly
Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
This is a relatively
short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise
of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th
century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward;
the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and
military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined
to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly
persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans
through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.
The
Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen
and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land
movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based
on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating,
timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging
philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.
Silent
Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd
In Silent Theft, David Bollier
argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering
privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are
engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we
collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs,
software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative
works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often,
however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps
give away our assets. Amazingly,
the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed
because we have lost our ability to see the commons.
The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics
Guide by John Seymour The
Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that
teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony
with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops
and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and
wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
When
Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
When Corporations
Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated
the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets
and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It
documents the devastating human and environmental consequences
of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct
values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their
own narrow ends.
The
New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques
for the Home and Market Gardener
This expansion
of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended
for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes
practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables,
with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock,
the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other
topics.
|