Phishing for Information
Some years ago, before the Internet was commonly available to home users, America Online was an innovative service accessed by dial-up modems. It was appealing, but not cheap. Some people figured out that obtaining free access was as simple as using a program to generate a fake credit card number and using that to open an AOL account. It took AOL a few weeks to figure out that the credit card number was no good, after which another fake number got the ball rolling again.
AOL eventually put a stop to this, so, naturally, even more reprehensible practices ensued. A program called AOHell emerged. It could send a barrage of instant messages to subscribers, posing as an AOL representative, luring them into providing personal ...
Get Windows 8 In Depth now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
