Jackhammer Shotgun

Tuesday December 23, 2003
I received a most interesting piece of spam today:

Subject: Your IP was logged

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Downloading of Movies, MP3s and Software is illegal and punishable by law.

We hereby inform you that your computer was scanned under the IP XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX . The
contents of your computer were confiscated as an evidence, and you will be indicated.
In the next days, you'll get the charge in writing.
In the Reference code: #42106, are all files, that we found on your computer.

The sender address of this mail was masked, to fend off mail bombs.


- You get more detailed information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
- Department for "Illegal Internet Downloads", Room 7350
- 935 Pennsylvania Avenue
- Washington, DC 20535, USA
- (202) 324-3000


The IP number, which was elided to protect whatever poor unfortunate might actually have that address, was elided, but it's outside the dynamic range of my ISP.

Attached to this was a screensaver, "refcode42106.scr", obviously a virus.

The funny thing is, if I found the sender of this particular fraudulent message and hollowed out and bleached their otherwise worthless skull to hold my pencils and other knicknacks in, I'm the one that would go to jail.