Steve Lasky, publisher and editor-in-chief of Security Technology Executive magazine, forwarded me the following phishing email with this comment: "Now this is a classic. I have never been scammed by the director of the FBI before...love this!!" We thought you'd enjoy it, too.
On a side note, Kevin Beaver and I discussed how phishing is part of a greater social engineering security threat to individuals and businesses in this week's podcast, Episode 47.
The original phishing message appears below:
-----Original Message-----
From: ROBERT S. MUELLER III [mailto:rob.mueller@btinternet.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 9:35 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Counter-terrorism Division and Cyber Crime Division J. Edgar. Hoover Building Washington DC
Attention Beneficiary,
Records show that you are among one of the individuals and organizations who are yet to receive their overdue payment from overseas which includes those of Lottery/Gambling, Contract and Inheritance. Through our Fraud Monitory Unit we have also noticed that over the past you have been transacting with some imposters and fraudsters who have been impersonating the likes of Prof. Soludo of the Central Bank Of Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Aziza, Anderson, none officials of Oceanic Bank, Zenith Banks, Kelvin Young of HSBC, Ben of FedEx, Ibrahim Sule, Dr. Usman Shamsuddeen and some imposters claiming to be The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Cyber Crime Division of the FBI gathered information from the Internet Crime Complaint Center (ICCC) formerly known as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC) of how some people have lost outrageous sums of money to these imposters. As a result of this we hereby advise you to stop communication with any one not referred to you by us.
We have negotiated with the Federal Ministry of Finance that your payment totaling $6,100,000.00 will be released to you via a custom pin based ATM card with a maximum withdrawal limit of $5,000 a day which is powered by Visa Card and can be used anywhere in the world were you see a Visa Card Logo on the Automatic Teller Machine (ATM). We have advised that this should be the only way at which you are to receive your payment because it’s more guaranteed, since over $5 billion was lost on fake cheque last year 2008.