Hackers pose as senator in email fraud bid
Stranded in bonnie Scotland
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Update: This story originally said that hackers had attempted to scam a US Senator. The target was actually an Iowa state senator.
Fraudsters attempted to scam a state senator's contacts after breaking into his webmail account.
Contacts of Bob Dvorsky, an Iowa state senator, received a message from his Yahoo account claiming that the lawmaker was stranded in Scotland and in urgent need of financial help. The scam message claimed that Dvorsky needed £10,000 to pay hotel bills and, even more unlikely, was out of access by phone. The full text of the email can be seen in a blog post by Sophos here.
Marks were invited to wire over money which would be collected by the hackers who broke into Dvorsky's Yahoo! email account. The senator told local news channel KCRG TV News that his Yahoo account was compromised as the result of a phishing scam.
Dvorsky is far from the first politician to be publicly embarrassed by email security problems. Hackers mounted an almost identical scam after breaking into the webmail account of former UK cabinet minister Jack Straw. The fraudsters, posing as Straw, claimed he'd lost his wallet during a trip to Nigeria. Most famously, the Yahoo account of Republican politician Sarah Palin was hacked into as the result of poor password reminder choices during the US presidential elections two years ago. ®
COMMENTS
Fail is all yours, sir.
Only people who are mentally retarded use e-mail facilities provided by ISP-s. What happens if you want to change your internet connection, move to different area with other options available or the ISP goes titsup?
Move along. Nothing to see here.
It's a very common scam. Send out loads of phishing emails, and you are bound to catch a few politicians.
@Apocalypse Later
Gmail account 'hacked'? Hmm... haven't come across that but I get plenty of dodgy Yahoo emails from friends who dropped their Yahoo accounts ages ago (because it's a shit service and because they seemed to get compromised easily).
I get a bit of spam in my Gmail account (that's filtered out) but otherwise in, oh, 6-7 years I've not had any problem with it whatsoever... (Not saying you won't though).
As "we" all know it's a good idea to have more than one email account and one (or two) should be mobile i.e.Gmail. Not everyone is able to set up their own domain - yes yes it's easy for us, but not necessarily for your average punter and definitely not for your average politician!
Years ago I remember a designer in a studio I did work for asking "why don't we all just have Hotmail accounts?" Oh yes.
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