Suspect that Fedora Legacy site list is being farmed for email addresses

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2005-08-15 11:36:08 -0700, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-08-15 at 18:39 +0100, nigel henry wrote:
> > Just received and email supposedly from Fedora Legacy. It just has
> > subject Re: And a From address: "Fedora-legacy"
> > <fedora-legacy at wsr.ac.at>.  Also has an attachment Garry .cpl.
> 
> It is highly unlikely that this list is being farmed.  IT takes a
> subscription to see addresses subscribed, and while the archives are
> public, this list is not exactly prime target for spammers.
> 
> What you are seeing is that the first part of the address is being
> spoofed, most likely pulled from some Windows user's address book or
> inbox, then sent to everybody else in that user's address book or inbox.

Or, more likely, from a browser cache. The address
<fedora-legacy at wsr.ac.at> doesn't exist, but it is part of the address I
use to post to this list. Programs which convert plain text to html
frequently don't know that "+" is a valid character in a mail address
and cut off the mail address at the wrong position.

> It is Joe-Jobbing.  Not a damn thing we can do about it.

Hmm. I wouldn't call that joe-jobbing: Joe-jobbing implies (to me, at
least) an intention to hurt the reputation of the owner of the address.
The use of random addresses by viruses isn't designed to do that. It's
an attempt at social engineering (users are more likely to open an
attachment from someone they know) and of covering the tracks.

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | In our modern say,learn,know in a day
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | world, perhaps being an expert is an
| |   | hjp at wsr.ac.at      | outdated concept.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |    -- Catharine Drozdowski on dbi-users.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 388 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-legacy-list/attachments/20050816/4e7fa060/attachment.sig>