This spoof isn’t funny

Spoofing, we are not talking about satirical or comical takes on existing content; it is a form of cyber crime and through this they are targeting job seekers.

The story of cyber spoofing goes like those Billy Madison style pranks, but this one apparently went real bad. The spoofing software was developed by a group of friends, and was intended for fun, but down the line the software and its spinoff are aiding and abetting, miscreants and even terrorists.

The word "spoof" means to hoax, trick, or deceive. In cyber crime parlance, spoofing refers to tricking or deceiving systems or other users. This is done by hiding one's identity or faking the identity of another user on the Internet.

Spoofing that takes place in different ways can be phone call, emails, Facebook messages, twitters, et al. In e-mail spoofing the fraudster sends messages from a bogus e-mail address or by faking the e-mail address of another user.

The fraudsters often send spam messages from their own Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), which allows them to use fake e-mail addresses. And with spoofing software now available online, it is possible to receive e-mail from an address that is not the actual address of the person sending the message.

Fraudsters are making rampant use of e-mail spoofing. Polam Reddy Bhaskar Reddy has done his MBA and is on a lookout for jobs. One day he got a mail from Hyundai’s e-mail ID, saying that there are some posts vacant and he was shortlisted for interview.

The interview was telephonic and a few days later, he got a mail from the same ID that he was selected. The e-mail transaction says that the jobs are back door entry and he was asked to deposit Rs 10,000 to a bank account. “When they asked me to deposit Rs 10,000 I got sceptical, googled and found the phone number and called the HR guys. To my dismay I found out that it was a fake offer,” says Bhaskar Reddy.

However, not all victims are as lucky as Bhaskar Reddy.

Speaking to Hyderabad Hans, Sairam, a cyber security expert said, “This e-mail spoofing and people falling prey to it grew in recent times. One can’t actually find out whether it was a fake mail as the mail comes from the domain of the reputed corporate company. They are losing money because of that. One has to be sceptical with a mail coming from a corporate company saying, backdoor entry.”

In conversation with a highly placed official from the Cyber cell of police department, he said, “this is a decade or long old saga and spoofing has always been a by-product of crime. People do not know what sort of crime has happened. In most cases they give a complaint of cheating and sometimes obscene mails.

While investigating the matter we discovered that it was spoofing. And the identity of someone else was used to commit the crime. Spoofing is more like impersonating someone. Here, the IP address of a particular person is used as an identity.”

He added cases on this particular type of cyber crime were high. Even a local police station registers at least two to three cases every month.

Reports with Cyber crime police suggest that there are many job seekers who have lost the money to this type of spoofing mails.

Tracking of the fraudsters is a difficult task as they also use ID spoofing to mask their IP address and it is only after people lose money they find out that the offer is fake. Reportedly the sleuths of cybercrime are working to catch these fraudsters