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I just received the following message:
"Small black big seen in salvage and pheasantry."
It's from a person I know as well. WTF?
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> "Small black big seen in salvage and pheasantry."
Translation: "My computer just caught a virus"
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Invisible wrote:
> I just received the following message:
>
> "Small black big seen in salvage and pheasantry."
>
> It's from a person I know as well. WTF?
Looks like typical spam email nonsense words.
--
Stefan Viljoen
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Tim Attwood wrote:
> Translation: "My computer just caught a virus"
Can you send SMS from a computer?
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Stefan Viljoen wrote:
> Looks like typical spam email nonsense words.
...except it's not email.
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On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 10:04:10 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>
> Can you send SMS from a computer?
Yes.
--
FE
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>> Can you send SMS from a computer?
>
> Yes.
1. How on earth do you do that?
2. Does any known malware actually exploit this fact?
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On Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:16:20 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
>>> Can you send SMS from a computer?
>> Yes.
>
> 1. How on earth do you do that?
There are a few free web-based services, but for commercial/bulk use you
would typically use a paid service.
> 2. Does any known malware actually exploit this fact?
Given that sending an SMS from your computer requires the cooperation of a
service provider, exploitation is somewhat impractical. Also, since even
those providers who offer a free service suffer an actual monetary cost
for each SMS transmitted, they have a powerful incentive to prevent abuse
of their service.
--
FE
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Invisible wrote:
>>> Can you send SMS from a computer?
>>
>> Yes.
>
> 1. How on earth do you do that?
Easy - almost every large cellphone service provider has some form of
web-based API you can use - we use clickatell.com's HTTP and FTP APIs for
web-based SMS transmissions via a custom PHP script.
> 2. Does any known malware actually exploit this fact?
It is possible, I suppose, but since there is no "SMS equivalent" for an
open SMTP relay, and SMSes usually cost $$$, it is not as easy as spamming
via email. Of course email costs time and resources (for somebody,
somewhere) just as SMS does, but usually the originator is paying real
money for the messaging - this limits spam. (Vs. email where you can
connect on port 25 to an open relay and spam for quite a bit, practically
for free, depending on your own bandwidth costs.)
--
Stefan Viljoen
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Invisible wrote:
> Stefan Viljoen wrote:
>
>> Looks like typical spam email nonsense words.
>
> ...except it's not email.
Granted, but a lot of the spam our server is blocking has much the same
types of disconnected words. Guess it is some form of probe - if you reply
to it, you're promptly buried - since some script or program somewhere
is "listening". I. e. some people will be stupid enough to hit reply on
that and say something like "huh? wrong number" and -that- signifies to
whomever is spamming that that cellphone (email) is "alive" and being read
by -someone-.
We've often had this with our clients, they get a weird email with these
types of words and then reply on it, often trying to get whomever sent it
to shut up. This instead -really- start upping their incoming spam as their
email address is IDed as a "live" one... guess its the same here?
--
Stefan Viljoen
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