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Beware Of Natalie From Facebook
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-07-25
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
There may have been a real Natalie behind the social engineering scam found by a McAfee researcher, but her Facebook connection is a total fake.
 | | Beware Of Natalie From Facebook |  |
The heavy media attention being heaped upon Facebook these days has made it an enticing entity to use in a credit card scam.
McAfee researcher Gaith Taha found what looked like a typical spam message. It used Facebook graphics and and styles to look like the sender "found" Taha on Facebook.
"After spending a couple of minutes inspecting that spam, it was obvious that the spammer didn't utilize Facebook in any technical manner but rather as a pure social-engineering trick to get people to read that spam," Taha said.
The spam contained an invitation to chat on Windows Live Messenger. Taha did so with a test account, and chatted with what turned out to be a bot with a couple of tricks, like taking its time to type a reply and pretending to send a "my_new_thong_pic" image that never arrived.
As it turns out, the whole point of the spam was to elicit credit card details for access to some live webcam shows. Taha said there supposedly was a real Natalie behind the scam.
Social engineering takes many forms, but in the end it's the personal details the criminal wants. Be alert and don't give that information to them.
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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