Are you the sort of person who adds a cartoon character’s email address to your chat program because it appeared on TV? If so then perhaps you too were fooled by the spammers who are now using Homer Simpson’s original email address, revealed in the episode “The Man Who Knew Too Little” in 2002, to infect your computer.
wasn’t just a scripted joke. It was really registered to Homer Simpson – or at least registered to writer-producer Matt Selman. Selman went online after the episode aired and aimed to respond to the hundreds of emails that came in. Producer Al Jean once explained:
"It's like letters to Santa Claus, he's trying to answer them as Homer and give advice."
Eventually, when the emails numbered the thousands and the mailbox became unmanageable, Selman let it become inactive.
But now it’s back. And unfortunately it’s back in the hands of Turkish hackers.
(Link)
Internet users, who added the chunkylover53 username to AOL Messenger (AIM), have found that the user is showing up online and providing a link to an exclusive Internet-only episode of the Simpsons!
Only, of course, it’s not. It’s a horrible piece of malware called Kimya that will mess up your computer, drop hidden files all over it and open your computer up to hackers.
So if you added chunkylover53 to your chat program and you’ve downloaded Kimya rather than a promised episode of The Simpsons; well, d’oh!
Security company in “make computer less secure” shocker
One of the largest and most important Microsoft patches ever released (in conjunction with fellow-technology giants Cisco and Sun) left hundreds of thousands of computer users without Internet.
The Windows patch (that many people received automatically over night) fixed security holes in DNS, the Internet protocol that translates internet domains (brandmailsolutions.com) in to those awkward IP addresses that are so hard to remember.
Unfortunately, some of the fundamental changes made upset popular firewall package Zone Alarm (with an estimated sixty million users worldwide) and caused them to lose their Internet connection. The change randomised the port used for DNS queries and Zone Alarm was unable to deal with this. They subsequently released a patch. (Link)
The interesting angle for me was the response of the two companies to the problem.
Zone Alarm issued a statement recommending that users roll back the Microsoft update (and therefore making their computer less secure). Microsoft recommended changing the security setting on Zone Alarm to “Medium”.
Microsoft has come out of this relatively unscathed in the sense that most would claim third party program behaviour is not their concern. Zonelabs (the Zone Alarm vendor), who have come out of it looking a little bit daft, have avoided controversy by refusing to blame Microsoft for lack of consultation or information on the upcoming patch.
However, for a security company to suggest making a user’s computer less secure by uninstalling a critical patch rather than just reducing the level of security in their own software for a day or two is Keystone Cop-worthy.
Don’t try to make a killing using the Internet - literally
I don’t think calling the following story “bizarre” does it justice at all.
Ireland has been gripped in recent weeks by an unfolding court case where 45-year-old Sharon Collins was accused of hiring a Las Vegas poker player on the Internet to kill her millionaire partner and his two sons. (Link)
When Essam Eid, the greedy wannabe-hitman, went to Collins’ partner, PJ Howard, and asked for £70,000 to cancel the hit, the police were alerted. As they investigated they said they had never seen so much evidence against a single person such as they found against Collins.
She denied all charges saying that she had been set up but unfortunately for her she didn’t understand the way computer IP addressing worked.
Her IP address was linked to incriminating actions such as ordering proxy marriage certificates, researching information for inheritance rights for cohabiting couples, booking flights under her own name and even logged in to her personal email account.
She also accessed an email address that has become synonymous with her femme fatale-esque actions now –
– an email account that sent numerous incriminating emails to
. Additionally, one of the countries biggest radio presenters was brought in to testify that his radio show had received an email from
entitled “Sleeping with the Enemy”.
A set up? It’s more predictable than a Steven Seagal movie.
Collins was found guilty on all counts. Obviously.
