Scammers Using Mock Copyright Lawsuit Threats To Get People To Download Malware
from the copying-the-best-in-the-business dept
With companies like Digiprotect, Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law busy sending out tens of thousands of so-called pre-settlement letters that threaten people (often on very little evidence, if any) of copyright infringement, but allow them to pay up to avoid a lawsuit, is it any surprise that out-and-out scammers are jumping into the game as well? Ben alerts us to a warning from US-CERT of a new email scam, which involves the scammers sending out legitimate looking emails pretending to be from a law firm, telling the recipients they're being sued for copyright infringement. The details are supposedly in a file at a URL provided in the email. When a visitor goes to that URL and downloads the file, they get malware instead. Yes, it appears that the malware scammers are now learning from the best in the business...Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Ooh, scathing. Hits the nail on the head, too.
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I might go write that program cause it shouldn't be very hard now should it.
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This could turn even worse.
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You'd think...
No legitimate law firm is going to send out correspondence that both capitalizes and misspells "Pretrail Conference".
And this sentence sounds like it was written by a 5-year-old:
"The reason the lawsuit was filed was due to
a completely inadequate response from your company
for copyright infrigement that our client Touchstone
Advisories Inc is a victim of Copyright infrigement"
No punctuation, random words capitalized, and basically nonsensical. It's almost as if English isn't the author's native language...
Anyone who falls for this and thinks a real law firm put this out needs to have their head examined.
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Re: You'd think...
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Funny
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And what's the penalty again for a 'false claim of copyright infringement'?
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How do you get malware from just downloading a file? Unless it's an EXE file and you're stupid enough to believe that a law firm would ask you to download and run a program. Of course, comsidering the complete cluelessness of today computer "users", it wouldn't surprise me if this is exactly what they're doing...
They don't even need to download or share copywrite material to / from your computer they just need to write some code so your ip address shows up on p2p or torrent software.
Why go to all that trouble, when you can just a screenshot and plain-text log file to show an IP address you want?
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Re:
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Re: Re:
The screenshot or plain text file aren't infringing in themselves. That is the kind of "evidence" that is used in copyright infringement cases. You get accused of infringement, dragged into court and the anti-piracy groups show up with screenshots and log files as "proof" that your IP address was the one sharing the files.
I suppose in some cases, they get an order to copy your drive and look through it for evidence, but at the start of the case, all they have are (easily faked) screenshots and log files.
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Re:
EXE installed malware has always been low-class scriptkiddy material,
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Read the article again, it specifically says that users get infected with malware when they download a file. If it was a drive-by installation, why make them download a file at all? That just looks more suspicious.
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Too bad they didn't patent it.
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SCAM JOURNAL - ijcaonline.org
International Journal of Computer Applications
ijcaonline.org
The best place to publish nonsensical papers!!!
Papers published by IJCA have no recognition in most Universities!!
Blacklisted by several universities in Europe, US and Asia!!
International Journal of Computer Applications
ijcaonline.org
a SCAM JOURNAL!!! BEWARE!!!!
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Good alerts...
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Lawsuit Scam
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