Thursday, October 06, 2005

Evolution in action: email worms keep getting smarter

I wonder how the creationists explain the evolution of email social engineering schemes? This was the most clever I've encountered yet. The German mail header, the grammatical errors, the explanation, the story about the zipped image -- all designed to lull the recipient into a trusting state. The only mistake is the To line, which looks like a glitch in the worm:
From: ingey@gmx.de
Subject: I've got your mail on my account!
Date: October 6, 2005 3:01:30 AM CDT
To: User@counter11.sextracker.com

hello,
First I must say, my English is very very bad! Sorry about this.

Ok, I've got an email in my box, but this email is not for me, because,,, I'm not the recipient! The recipient are YOU !!!

This must be an email provider error, but I don't know!
I have made a Screenshot about this mail and saved in a zipped jpeg graphic file for you.


ok then,
bye
There's constant experimentation and variation in these infected emails. If something succeeds, then its emulated and extended. The To: line glitch above will be revised. I find this example of real-time natural selection quite remarkable.

I did try opening the zip (on my Mac of course, I figured the risk was about zero). The Mac wouldn't open the corrupted zip file. On a PC it would probably initiate the infection.

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