November 21, 2005

I’ve seen a sudden upsurge in a particular kind of spam over the past day or so. All of them come with a (Windows) executable attachment.

Several of the messages read as follows:

From:     Admin@cia.gov
Subject:  Your IP was logged
Date:     21 November 2005 22:07:31 CST
To:       [my e-mail address]

Dear Sir/Madam,

we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites.

Important:
Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.

Yours faithfully,
Steven Allison

++++ Central Intelligence Agency -CIA-
++++ Office of Public Affairs
++++ Washington, D.C. 20505

++++ phone: (703) 482-0623
++++ 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time

Call me crazy, but it seems like a really, really bad idea to use the CIA—the same organization known to torture prisoners—as the Joe in your little joe-job phishing expedition.

later: Apparently I’m not the only one getting these.