It was with a combination of mild consternation and not-a-little amusement that I reacted to spurious SMSs to my mobile phone recently. In one day, within two messages, I was advised that I had won a whopping grand total of over one million pounds Sterling. The apparently generous benefactors were “BA-GOODNEWS” and “BA-Demo”. Perforce, one ought to know that money, especially in such large amounts, is never distributed without strings, or ought I to say “ropes”, attached, and these messages were evidently part of a scam.
The SMS contents were as follows:
BA-GOODNEWS
YOUR CELL -NO HAS BEEN AWARDED 700,000 GBP IN 2011 MICROSOFT PROMO.FOR CLAIM CONTACT MR DAVID BROWN VIA EMAIL;
<email stub>@hotmail.co.uk
and
BA-Demo
YOU-HAVE-WON-350,000-GBP-POUND-IN-2011-BLACKBERRY-INTL’L-MOBILE-DRAWS-HOLD-IN-UK-TO CLAIM-YOUR-PRIZE-CONTACT NELSON VIA EMAIL;<email stub>@hotmail.co.uk
Needless to say, it was not that such a scam was doing the rounds that was surprising. Rather, it was the incongruous references to Sterling currency, the UK, and the domain .co.uk to an Indian mobile phone number that were a tad incredible and worthy of ridicule. In this day and age, where cyber criminals are professionals, one would have expected the social engineering efforts used in the scam to be a little bit more sophisticated. I suppose even aspiring cyber criminals need to “cut their ropes” (sic) … oops.
Credits:
- Images courtesy of zazzle.com, fiveprime.org, and suntimes.com.
Samir Mody
Senior Manager TCL
