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U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#251

Post by mmooss »

HamsterDan wrote: post #125
mmooss wrote: post #4

Don't fall into the trap: Government penalizing private parties without due process can be appealing when it's a private party you don't like, but even those people deserve due process - that's the point, everyone does. Also it's arbitrary, unchecked power that is used for corrupt purposes, and by supporting it in a situation where you like to see it, you are legitimizing that power in every case. Edit: It's tough to…

They are a foreign company. They have no due process rights. We could hit their data center with a cruise missile tomorrow and it would be perfectly legal.

> They are a foreign company. They have no due process rights.

That is part of my point; there needs to be due process.

> We could hit their data center with a cruise missile tomorrow and it would be perfectly legal.

That is false. It is illegal to take military action against another country without a declaration of war.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#252

Post by dragonwriter »

mmooss wrote: post #250
School-Cotton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There are laws about when you can shoot someone during warfare. For example, you need to be a uniformed soldier, in most cases, of a party to an active conflict. The declaration of war and your uniform make the homicide legal. The US has not declared war and these aren't acts of war.

> The declaration of war and your uniform make the homicide legal.

Declarations of war have very little international importance any more, since the recognition of the crime of aggression; either you are engaging in aggressive war, which a declaration does nothing to legitimize, or you are engaging in defensive war against an aggressor, where it is the aggression, not any declaration, that gives your fighting legitimacy.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#253

Post by DaSHacka »

nobody9999 wrote: post #214
tayo42 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I'm wondering. How do you get the typical person to fall for a scam to open a crypto account, buy it, go through kyc, etc

>How do you get the typical person to fall for a scam to open a crypto account, buy it, go through kyc, etc With spam like the below (note that the original contains mostly UTF8 characters to avoid spam filters). I get these every so often on the NOC and postmaster addresses of domains I manage. It's not even phishing. Just spam blasts to find anyone uninformed enough to believe it, and insecure enough to be afraid o…

> I'd expect that each spam recipient is given a unique BTC address, so that they can be identified for further "blackmail"[0] should they actually comply.

They typically aren't, actually. Most of the time when you enter the wallet address into Blockchair or another BTC transaction monitoring service you'll see tons of payments for the demanded amount having been sent to that sole wallet.

Even thinking of it logistically, its a whole lot easier for a scammer to just send literally the same email to every victim, wait some months, then withdraw the funds from one BTC wallet.

It's such a simple scam, anyone who can make a BTC wallet and send emails could pull it off.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#254

Post by OfficeChad »

anovikov wrote: post #52
naet wrote: post #25

Cryptocurrency enables a big part of this. Not saying that there weren't any wire scams before crypto, but crypto has made it much easier for average people to make anonymous international money transfers that can't be reversed. Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or to use them for various forms of crime. Someone will probably tell…

Reason of most scams is the absurd level of trust existing in Western countries. When i first saw Upwork where hours were paid by the tracker in a guaranteed manner and people SIGNED for it, i knew West was doomed. I still find it hard to believe people can be that easy to dupe. Level of trust in the Western societies needs to be radically reduced through government propaganda, church and other channels. The world ha…

[dead]

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#256

Post by [deleted] »

naet wrote: post #25

Cryptocurrency enables a big part of this. Not saying that there weren't any wire scams before crypto, but crypto has made it much easier for average people to make anonymous international money transfers that can't be reversed. Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or to use them for various forms of crime. Someone will probably tell…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#257

Post by kalaksi »

fuddy wrote: post #206
kalaksi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Smart contracts or other functionality integrated into wallets could also improve usability e.g. regarding irreversibility and user mistakes. Base layer doesn't have to be the final way to use cryptocurrencies and it isn't.

This just bring in new problems like people thinking they got paid but there being a refund trick.. This happens in the traditional system too, but at least when it exhibits total indifference to an account serving no purpose besides refund scams it is violating KYC principles instead of running as expected.

The point is that trade-offs are a fact of life. Some problems get solved, other problems appear. I'm not saying the new problems shouldn't be addressed, I'm just talking in general and I believe there are many kinds of solutions that can mitigate many kinds of problems. Just like in traditional banking. I just think it's pointless to try to invent and flesh them out here.

You could still decide what kind of use suits you the best. Regular people wouldn't (and shouldn't) need to know all the technicalities. A trusted party, maybe a bank, could provide their own integrated solution with whatever features they want to offer.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#258

Post by lofaszvanitt »

fennecfoxy wrote: post #134
naet wrote: post #25

Cryptocurrency enables a big part of this. Not saying that there weren't any wire scams before crypto, but crypto has made it much easier for average people to make anonymous international money transfers that can't be reversed. Not to start a big argument, but to my eyes the main usecases of cryptocurrency are to bet on them as a speculative asset or to use them for various forms of crime. Someone will probably tell…

Totally agree, I think crypto is cool from a technological standpoint, but I don't think I've seen one common genuine use of BTC, etc. And before someone comes in with very specific, anecdotal examples - notice I said "common", ie not buying your indie music from a retro-Serb band that plays using the concept of instruments as instruments and from abandoned sewers; but only on Mondays. I definitely feel like the majo…

Oh, it's making a comeback, repackaged and repurposed just the way the key players want it. BTC, NFTs etc. introduced groundbreaking new ideas, but faceless entities and lots of press outlets shunned and butchered them in every way possible. This clearly delineated the current state of affairs.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#259

Post by naming_the_user »

porridgeraisin wrote: post #247
naming_the_user wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much, yeah. If almost half of the population disagree with something then it’s probably a stupid restriction to begin with.

But most laws in democracies pass with just about majority. The president in america was selected with just-about majority. Do you suggest changing elections so that we keep doing them until the vote skews to 100%? 90%? What's the threshold?

I suggest not having laws that 50% of people disagree with, e.g. if 49% of people like raspberry jam then the 51% who like strawberry shouldn’t ban it regardless of whether they are in control.

Basically, generally, live and let live.

Re: U.S. sanctions cloud provider 'Funnull' as top source of 'pig butchering' scams

#260

Post by fuddy »

kalaksi wrote: post #257
fuddy wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just bring in new problems like people thinking they got paid but there being a refund trick.. This happens in the traditional system too, but at least when it exhibits total indifference to an account serving no purpose besides refund scams it is violating KYC principles instead of running as expected.

The point is that trade-offs are a fact of life. Some problems get solved, other problems appear. I'm not saying the new problems shouldn't be addressed, I'm just talking in general and I believe there are many kinds of solutions that can mitigate many kinds of problems. Just like in traditional banking. I just think it's pointless to try to invent and flesh them out here. You could still decide what kind of use suit…

There are plenty of options in bank settlement protocols. I think the point under discussion is not banking improvement but bankless user sovereignty via technical means.

The smart contract writers sometimes fool themselves when working on the problem full time.. That's a bigger problem if the code is the contract instead of code attempts to honor the contract and a system with judgement can undo things that obviously fall bellow our ethical expectations like account ID swaps, supply chain attacks, kidnapping/intimidation and so on.

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