Hacked!

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