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Email from FBI Looks Odd

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Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#91
post #25

The email domain where the messages originate is from some sort of federated identity management system that was created in 2010 (here is a proposal deck [0] with technical details). Found this program simply by searching Google for the sending domain. Based on the guide for using this system [1] (see step 15) looks like this specific email address is the one that sends automated confirmation emails upon registration…

> The Reddit thread suggests the recipients’ emails are likely ARIN IP range contacts.

It's likely multiple different sources. I just noticed I got it as well on my personal email (which has custom domain) and I don't own any IP ranges.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#92

Lots of people commenting that the text of the email seems amateurish. Perhaps it’s exactly as it should be, but you don’t understand its purpose. Maybe they wanted this to be discussed on netsec forums everywhere, so that Google searches for “Vinny Troia” always lead back to discussion about this email, framing him as a cyber criminal and outranking legitimate posts about or by him - an online identity assassination…

If you look at Vinny Troia’s YouTube channel, he gave a media interview regarding members of “TheDarkOrder” being arrested for ransomware.

One potential explanation is that this is retaliation for same.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#93
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no reform after COINTELPRO. The FBI has known about nearly every mass shooter for the past 20 years, they've leaked numerous investigations and raids to the press for political reasons, they sit on evidence for political reasons, they target domestic journalists for political reasons, they lied to FISA courts for political reasons, and they've been sitting on exculpatory evidence for political reasons, they…

No idea what the other commenter was alluding to...

They did allegedly just raid a politically opposed journalistic outlet and leak confidential reporter's notes to NYT, which is sort of illegal. Can anyone explain why Biden's daughter's stolen diary, which PV obtained and gave back, is grounds for an FBI search warrant?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29210285

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#94
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no reform after COINTELPRO. The FBI has known about nearly every mass shooter for the past 20 years, they've leaked numerous investigations and raids to the press for political reasons, they sit on evidence for political reasons, they target domestic journalists for political reasons, they lied to FISA courts for political reasons, and they've been sitting on exculpatory evidence for political reasons, they…

No idea what the other commenter was alluding to...

I am guessing "Anyone who gets seriously close to threatening the FBI's existence will get extrajudicially prevented from doing so"?

For a lawmaker, you don't even have to do anything legally or (particularly) morally questionable like killing them - just entrap them and have them lose their jobs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abscam

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#95

I received this at 1:07 AM PST to my work sysadmin account. It passed Barracuda and Office 365 spam filters. Initially I felt a surging panic when I realized the source IP was indeed FBI, especially considering one of our close partners recently buckled under a ransomware attack they refused to pay, and thus had to rebuild from backups over a period of two weeks. Smells mostly bogus now with no links to a status page…

If it wasn't whois then another common tactic is to use LinkedIn and guess addresses from the names.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the phishing training I was mandated to take at work if you are stupid enough to overlook the mistakes you are the right target. According to them the misspellings filter out the smart enough people they don’t want talking to. But that could also be nonsense.

Ignoring this specific case where it seems especially unlikely, that's always seemed like someone worked backwards and overthought it to me, "the spelling mistakes, they have to mean something". I don't think there is a binary smart population and dumb population to optimise around, for every step down, some people who are otherwise convinced become hesitant and waste time, and some of that group become totally uncon…

In this podcast episode with the founder of conversational AI, he describes the need to make spelling mistakes (and correct them) in order to help establish that the bot is actually a human.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-python-podcast-ini...

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the phishing training I was mandated to take at work if you are stupid enough to overlook the mistakes you are the right target. According to them the misspellings filter out the smart enough people they don’t want talking to. But that could also be nonsense.

Ignoring this specific case where it seems especially unlikely, that's always seemed like someone worked backwards and overthought it to me, "the spelling mistakes, they have to mean something". I don't think there is a binary smart population and dumb population to optimise around, for every step down, some people who are otherwise convinced become hesitant and waste time, and some of that group become totally uncon…

The argument is that the hacker’s operational costs are massively dominated by the manual work of social engineering, so they have a huge incentive to filter out people who are less responsive to social engineering.

If you accept that some people are more credulous than others, it becomes the best strategy to optimize for only talking to people who believe you.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#98
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can send email from the FBI then you also have a get out of jail free card for any crime. Seems like a bad use of this access.

I don't see how sending an email from the FBI gives you a get out of jail free card.

If the FBI offers you immunity in exchange for implicating yourself in a crime, then they can't retroactively retract that offer after you've already confessed. This is true even in cases where the defendant was improperly offered immunity. And emails from an organization's domain name are generally legally binding.

(Obviously this isn't legal advice.)

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#99
post #61

I still don't quite understand hackers: doing such high-profile hacking and writing lame texts even wihout much fact checking (about agency divisions in this case). Being written in more professional way, this attack could be way more effective. Also, is it a thing among "hackers" to write with tons of mistakes? A part of culture maybe? Or to scare the bricks out of people? )

According to the phishing training I was mandated to take at work if you are stupid enough to overlook the mistakes you are the right target. According to them the misspellings filter out the smart enough people they don’t want talking to. But that could also be nonsense.

Spelling errors like that are how real people write in enterprise, imagine Trump writing email

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#100
post #19

"email from FBI", and the Nigerian FBI office at that ... Reminded - a professor of a Moscow University couple months ago received a call from Russian Central Bank advising him that his account in some bank is being actively targeted by scammers/hackers, and that he needs to temporarily transfer the money to the special holding account the Central Bank rep provided, so the professor did. Some time later the scammers…

> Hang up and call the public phone number of the company A and ask for the John

Some time ago a HN user was approached by the CIA/FBI like this (they wanted help with a software he wrote). They told him to look up the public number for the agency and ask for agent whatever.

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