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Email from FBI Looks Odd

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Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#101

Post by rPlayer6554 »

caturopath wrote: post #77
flatiron wrote: post #70

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.

Yeah, I buy this theory in general, but I'm not sure that's the highest-leverage way to use this access.

I think higher level ways get dangerous. Contacting the FBI directly to try and get money might make it easier to find you. Trying to sell it or other information to a foreign entity is also risky because you can't be sure they won't turn you over.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#102

Post by elliekelly »

Alex3917 wrote: post #98
enkid wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The FBI doesn’t offer immunity. The DOJ does. There’s also usually a signed document called a “proffer letter” or a “Queen for a Day” agreement that’s signed by an AUSA. I’m not sure an email would pass muster. Maybe it would, but it would certainly be a very big departure from the norm.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#103

Post by tsywke44 »

IYasha wrote: 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? )

The email text to me looks like it was written by some 15-year-old zoomer kid with no clue what they’re really doing.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#105

Post by agency »

chillingeffect wrote: post #59
IAmGraydon wrote: post #54

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…

Don't know of Vinny, but if he's a security guy, maybe one of his colleagues is pranking him? My college buddies did this kind of stuff to one another. They would die laughing at finding a way to legit send spam through the fbi.

Love to commit high profile cyber crime that could land me in prison, as a prank.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#106

Post by mattnewton »

IYasha wrote: 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? )

I wonder if, similar to automatically choosing alternate synonyms, small spelling errors throw off naive spam detectors while remaining perfectly readable?

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#108

Post by RNCTX »

geofft wrote: post #94
tata71 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you do catch them and it's too public to go after you for retribution, they'll sell a federal judiciary seat to someone willing to erase it.

One of Trump's 2017 judicial appointments in the ND of Texas dismissed the civil suit against the FBI, DOJ, and Comey by name for organizing the "ISIS" mass shooting in Garland, TX in 2015. We know they organized it because local cops caught an undercover in the parking lot who was waiting on the shooters to arrive. [1] He had to identify himself as undercover to stop the local cops from shooting him. [2] A security guard who was shot in the incident brought the civil suit against the feds, discovery produced text messages showing the same undercover FBI agent giving the shooters instructions. The FBI also had to remove flags from databases so the shooters could pass background checks for gun purchases.

And before anyone falls for the knee-jerk tendency of thinking one political party is different from the other, the judge who dismissed the case on her first day was a stalled Obama appointment to the same seat before she was a Trump appointment confirmed for that seat. And the person who blew the whistle on the FBI paying people to recruit and train domestic "terrorists" said they began doing so when Obama took office in 2009.

1. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2017/02/1...

2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/terrorism-in-garland-texas-what...

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#109

Post by xhkkffbf »

I hate to say it, but if I were to get an email from "fbi.gov", I would assume it belongs in the same pile as the great offers from that Nigerian prince. Even if I look at the headers, I wouldn't be convinced.

Perhaps we should try harder to create a public key infrastructure for email.

Re: Email from FBI Looks Odd

#110

Post by astronautjones »

twofornone wrote: post #93
tata71 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

calling that guy a journalist is hilariously disingenuous. the guy that has been caught doctoring and falsely editing literally everything that he has produced?

He's catering to an audience of hateful people that can't even eat breakfast without it being in bad faith. He is weeks away from an expose telling you that actually the confederacy landed on the moon first.

Being a contrarian fool that argues blindly without accepting or understanding reality and context is de rigueur on this website, it's disgusting

and telling as to why the industry is so self-serving and fraud-ridden

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