Yahoo Biz Article

Even before Congress passes an economic stimulus package, identity thieves are using promises of tax rebates to trick people into revealing financial and personal data, the Internal Revenue Service warned Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT Under one scheme, the IRS said, people are receiving phone calls telling them they can only receive a rebate if they provide bank account information for a direct deposit. The tax agency stressed that it does not collect information by telephone and that no legislation has been enacted that would allow it to provide advance payments to taxpayers or that specifies the details of those payments. The House last week, as part of an economic stimulus package, approved tax rebates of $600 and $1,200 respectively for most individuals and couples, with another $300 per child. The Senate is now considering a slightly different version. The IRS also repeated past warnings of e-mails, supposedly coming from the agency, where people are asked to enter personal information on a form needed to obtain a tax refund. A new scam, it said, involves an e-mail notification that a person's tax return will be audited with instructions to click on links to complete forms with personal and account information. Businesses and accountants are also getting e-mails with instructions to download information on tax law changes. Clicking on these links could download "malware" onto the recipient's computer that gives the scammer remote access to the computer hard drive. In another telephone scam, a caller claims to be an IRS employee who says the taxpayer has not cashed a refund check and asks the person to verify his or her bank account number. On Tuesday, at a Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing for Douglas Shulman, the nominee to be IRS commissioner, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., expressed concern that taxpayers would be victimized by tax preparers and lenders who charge high interest rates for short-term advances on their stimulus rebates. The IRS advised people not to click on any link from an e-mail purporting to come from the tax agency. People receiving questionable e-mails can contact the IRS through phishing@irs.gov.

Dennis Banks Memoriam

Subject: "Hackers overwhelm key Web computers"

February 6, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks against the Internet since 2002.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17011675/

Subject: Special Worm Virus Alert

A new malicious worm began infecting systems last week, which promises to launch an attack on February 3rd – and the 3rd of every month thereafter, according to threat researchers at antivirus and content security firm Trend Micro. The new worm, known by such names as Nyxem, BlackMal, Mywife, and CME- 24, has infected hundreds of thousands of machines over the past week, most from unsuspecting users who do not yet know they are infected. Like most worms, WORM_GREW.A propagates via email attachments and network shares, including popular P2P file sharing services. The email method of transmission employs common social engineering techniques – including the promise of pictures, pornographic content, or a joke – to entice users to open the corresponding attachment.
http://www.trendmicro.com/home/Grew_Advisory.pdf

Subject: Special Worm Virus Alert

August 17, 2005. A computer worm unleashed over the weekend infected computers running Microsoft operating systems, with Windows 2000 users most seriously affected.

The Zotob worm and several variations of it, known as Rbot.cbq, SDBot.bzh and Zotob.d, infected computers at major companies.

Microsoft Corp. released a "critical" patch for the vulnerability, which is most severe on Windows 2000 systems. Please be sure your systems are safeguarded with the latest Microsoft updates as well as Antivirus software updates to protect against this serious threat. For additional information regarding this worm, visit http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/08/16/computer.worm/index.html

Subject: Latest Virus Threat

June 25, 2004. NEW YORK (AP) -- A mysterious Internet virus being spread Friday by hundreds and possibly thousands of infected Web sites may be aimed at stealing credit card and other valuable information, security experts warned.

The infection appears to take advantage of three separate flaws with Microsoft Corp. products. Microsoft said software updates to fix two of them had been released in April, but the third flaw was newly discovered and had no patch to fix it yet.

The infection makes subtle changes to the Web site so visitors get a piece of code that's designed to retrieve from a Russian Web site software that records a person's keystrokes and can send data back, experts say. Such software "Trojan horses" are routinely used to fish for credit card numbers, bank accounts, passwords and the like.

"Users should be aware that any Web site, even those that may be trusted by the user, may be affected by this activity and thus contain potentially malicious code," the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team warned in an Internet alert.

Stephen Toulouse, a security program manager at Microsoft, recommended that computer owners obtain the latest security updates for Microsoft products and their anti-virus and firewall programs.

The infection does not affect Macintosh versions of Internet Explorer.

Technical Support Team

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