I am just recovering from another
cyber-attack. This time, it came from someone (might even have been a machine)
gaining access to my email account, by which they then persuaded my bank
to transfer a significant sum of money to an account in America. Unfortunately,
my account manager, who I will call Sam, was out of the office last Friday when
the attack was launched. So it was his stand-in who had to deal with his mails
and who was duped into processing the request through.
After
the weekend, and on reviewing his emails on Monday morning, Sam sussed that something
was very wrong. The giveaway for him was the differences between the way the
scammer wrote and the way I write. Furthermore the scammer suggested that he would
be 'unavailable for the rest of the day because he would be at his office'. Sam knew
that unless my circumstances had changed drastically over the weekend, there was no way I could
be at any office. So he promptly checked with his Friday stand-in to find out
if any money had gone out. Indeed, money had gone from my account.
Now
that I have had time to exhale, I am thinking that there could be a connection
between my near-death experience (exaggerating here, of course) and the
government impasse that has seized America during the last week. While I am not
deluded in thinking that my few dollars will help Obama in his stance against
the fundamentalist hordes, poor Federal government employees, forced to go on unpaid
leave, might be tempted to use alternative means to keep the wolf from the
door.
I hope these poor guys will forgive my slander, but cyber-attacks
come from all quarters these days. It was quite a body-blow when we learned this
week that Canada has been conducting cyber spying on Brazil, through its shady CSEC
that very few of us had heard about. I googled them to see what they are about
and found out that the Communications
Security Establishment Canada is a
very swish organization which even have the brass to advertise openly online for
operatives. I didn’t see anything that fitted my skills set, but I applied
anyway, since I reckon I qualify on a
number of general grounds: no criminal record, a clear conscience resistant to polygraph
testing and, so far, an uninteresting credit and financial history.
Perhaps I might get lucky. Then, there will be no hiding place for that villain.
I
should say though, that apart from the inconvenience of having to go through
the hassle of sterilizing my computer and changing passwords, the injury has
been relatively slight. The bank fully reimbursed my account. They, in turn,
suffered only a minor loss resulting from variations in Canadian-US dollar exchange rates
that occurred over that weekend.
And now,
finally. Apologies if you received an email, purporting to come from me,
inviting you to buy foreclosed real estate.
Tell
Fren Tru
