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Sober IT truths from the island-state

by Michael Tan, Singapore

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My vote goes to the Roulette Trick email for the state of the art in spam social engineering

Jul 31, 2009 11:35

Spam social engineering is the art of getting people to perform what the spammer wishes. Most of the time a spammer wishes to get the spammed to visit a Web site. There are billions of spam mail, so even increasing it by 0.0001 percent makes a helluva difference.

Today, I received an email from a real close and smart friend. It went like this:

from	: XXX
sender-time		Sent at 11:10AM (GMT+08:00). Current time there: 11:29AM.
reply-to		XXX
to		XXX
date		Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 11:10AM
subject		Fw: ok sending it

dunno why I got this... some send by mistake? Spam/virus?

but this damn double-up method can f*cking kill you...
--------------------------------------------------
From: "roger" jasonteit@dancingjesus.com

Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 12:20AM
Subject: Re: ok sending it

> Yo mate, ok I'll give you my trick but if you give it someone else I'll
> fuckin kill you :)
> you know in roulette you can bet on blacks or reds. If you bet $1 on black
> and it goes black you win $1 but
> if it goes red you loose your $1.
> So I found a way you can win everytime:
>
> bet $1 on black if it goes black you win $1
>
> now again bet $1 on black, if it goes red bet $3 on black, if it goes red
> again bet $8 on black,
> if red again bet $20 on black, red again bet $52 on black (always multiple
> you previous lost bet around 2.5)
> if now is black you win $52 so you have $104 and you bet:
>
> $1 + $3 + $8 + $20 + $52 = $84 So you just won $20 :)
>
> now when you won you start with $1 on blacks again etc etc. its always
> bound to go black
> eventually (it's 50/50) so that way you eventually always win. But there's
> a catch. If you
> start winning too much (like $1000 a day) casino will finally notice
> something and can ban
> you. I was banned once on royal casino. So don't be too greedy and don't
> win more then $200
> a day and you can do it for years. I think bigger casinos know that trick
> so I play for real
> money on smaller ones, right now I play on lycky jackpot casino:
lucky7jackpot.netfor more
> then 3 months, I win $50-$200 a day and my account still works. You'll
> find roulette there when you log in go to
> "specialty games" - "american roulette". And don't you dare talling about
> it anyone else,
> if too many people knows about it casinos will finally found a way to
> block that trick. If
> you have any questions just drop me a line here or on skype.
>
> c ya
>
>
>> Hi roger.
>> Please tell me when you will send me your roulette trick?
>> You promised you`ll send it few weeks ago :(
>>
> Thanks in advance.
>>
>
>
>
Wow. My friend is a cynical skeptic most of the time, and he forwarded spam to me. It's incredible. The social engineering of this spam must have elevated its hit rate by orders of magnitude. In fact, you may not even think that this is spam, but my friend was not the only one who got this spam. Check the others: http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2009/07/new-gambling-spam-offers-secret-roulette-trick.html

I pity the spam filters. I guess the sheer scale of these emails will ring alarm bells. But if one tries to filter spam by looking at the email alone, this is the first one which is... difficult.

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About Michael Tan

Michael Tan is lucky enough not to have to choose between his job and his passion. He is the responsible for all aspects of developing new businesses and sourcing new productlines for a regional IT distribution company. He also oversees the company's legal affairs as General Counsel. In real life, he is a technology enthusiast, from both the fun and business viewpoint. The only choices he has to make are whether to play with his astro telescopes, his PC games, his Wii console, hit the track, tweak his car, or refine his biofilters, post his blogs, research for a new digicam, scour every forum to feed his habit further, play with his son… You can reach Michael at michaeltanyk@gmail.com ALL BLOGPOSTS ONLY REFLECT MICHAEL'S OPINIONS AND NOBODY ELSES'.