Dal IT guru warns against Egypt scam
Posted Feb 18, 2011 08:40:33 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The information technologies expert at Dalhousie University affectionately calls his vocation Defence Against the Dark Arts.
“These people are involved in things that are shady, illicit, illegal, and because they’re offshore and there are no boarders in the internet, we have to protect accordingly,” said Michael Murray.
He’s talking about the hackers who break into computer systems and rifle through the hard drives from a remote location, the spammers who inundate email boxes with garbage mail and the phishers who can lift your personal information and passwords as you hit each key.
“In Harry Potter where the original course was at Hogwarts, when we say Dark Arts these are people who are basically evil,” he said. “They’re trying to exploit you for their own personal gain.”
And the most recent scam circulating on the Internet will do just that.
Murray warns the infamous Nigerian email scam’s latest incarnation is using the unrest in Egypt to gain sympathy. Instead of a Nigerian prince needing help transferring his fortune, it’s a deposed Egyptian minister who wants to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars for your banking information.
The scam will not only clean out your bank account, it has the potential to hijack your computer to send out more spam mail.
Murray says there are courses a person can take to become a hacker, or better yet, learn how not to get hacked.
“If you understand what the ‘enemy’ is doing, you are better prepared to protect against those individuals,” he said.
Meanwhile, federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty says no budget information was compromised when hackers attacked the treasury board’s network computers.
