<\/strong>Santa Claus, the jolly old elf made famous for his giving nature and a serious jones for cookies and milk, is packing his sleigh at this very moment. Poised to defy the laws of physics and visit a few billion homes in the next twenty-four hours while we snuggle up in front of the fire with a large mug of hot chocolate, we must all fight the urge to dial 911 when we hear the pitter patter of reindeer hooves on the roof. And while the fat man in the red suit has most likely already signed-off on his naughty or nice list, there\u2019s one nasty little child holed up somewhere in Russia who needs to get a large lump of coal in his stocking this year. Or if not a lump of coal, then a shiny new pair of law enforcement-grade handcuffs.<\/p>\n

What is it about this time of the year that brings out the worst in people? Religious beliefs aside, there\u2019s something about this time of the year that should make all people take a deep breath, send a little good will out to fellow humans, and, well\u2026just smile, dammit. Unfortunately, for spammers, scammers, skimmers and scummers (last attempt this year at coining a new word), it appears that there\u2019s no room for taking time off over the holidays and treat others with the dignity and respect that most people recognize as a necessary element of a living, breathing society.<\/p>\n

Case in point: <\/strong>The Register<\/em> reported<\/a> earlier this month that three anti-scam sites were inundated with a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack over several days, effectively rendering the sites useless. According to The Register<\/em>, \u201cThe sites – 419eater.com, scamwarners.com and aa419.org (Artists Against 419) – were swamped with junk traffic for several days. During the attack the sites’ administrators turned to blogs, Facebook and other alternative channels to distribute news of newly detected fake payment sites and other urgent anti-fraud information.\u201d According to an anonymous Register<\/em> reader, \u201c”These websites and their users provide excellent exposure for online fraud activities and have been responsible for allowing thousands of prospective victims to detect a scam in play, and get out before losses are incurred They also work actively to kill fake bank sites, fake freight forwarding sites and other criminal resources.”\u201d<\/p>\n

The Register reported that two of the three sites were back in working order in a few days, but the story takes a nefarious turn from here. Early speculation was that a Russian scam artist (scum artist? Okay, last attempt at coining a new term. This year.) was responsible for the attacks, and not long afterward, someone over at ScamWarners contacted The Register<\/em> and divulged that the attack, \u201cwas perpetrated by a scammer who became angry at a topic posted on 419Eater, which exposed his scam. 419Eater.com was first attacked and ScamWarners began to publicise it via Twitter and Facebook. The next day [Thursday], ScamWarners was also attacked. The scammer then sent an email to me, threatening both ScamWarners and 419Eater. We were told to cease exposing their information and reporting their Amazon sites or we would both be eradicated from cyberspace.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that last sentence didn\u2019t outrage you at least a little bit, go back and read it again. Is it necessarily foolish and na\u00efve to believe that even scammers \u2013 scumbags who invest a significant amount of time into developing malware designed to bilk little old ladies living on fixed incomes out of their precious savings \u2013 might take a little time off during Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukah, Ashura, or whatever religious observance you prefer to\u2026uhm\u2026observe? Absolutely it is. One could assume that\u2019s what bulbous men in red tights with fist-sized lumps of coal are for. But acceptance isn\u2019t enough. This is a time of the year \u201cwhen want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices,\u201d as Dickens pointed out; yet the inhumanity of the deeds of a few are enough to make this writer wonder how we continue to survive the ravages of human nature \u2013 in other words, ourselves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a year fraught with cyber crime and cyber busts, with malicious attacks and new forms of spam; with new scams and chilling suggestions of things to come. For this week, anyway, most of us will rejoice at the presence of family and friends, and sadly, many will go hungry. Unfortunately, the latter will most likely not be the scammers. Here\u2019s hoping that in 2012, we will have a chance to see more of these blights on our little blue-green orb find the other side of steel bars.<\/p>\n

Next week:<\/strong> tune in for our top 10 list of popular torture methods for 2012, designed specifically for the aforementioned scumbags.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Santa Claus, the jolly old elf made famous for his giving nature and a serious jones for cookies and milk, is packing his sleigh at… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,13,14],"tags":[11,9,10,8,7],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-security","category-spam","tag-allspammedup","tag-bot","tag-botnet","tag-malware","tag-spam","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1826,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/1826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hidefideas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}