‘The New Nigerian Email Swindle?’

Ms. Perlroth is reporting on a series of “cyber-attacks affecting clients based in Taiwan and South Korea.” According to her, the Internet company Palo Alto Networks (PAN) has been studying the attacks and has finally traced them to Nigeria. The attacks are said to be perpetrated by the “same people behind the Nigerian 419 swindle, […]

Ms. Perlroth is reporting on a series of “cyber-attacks affecting clients based in Taiwan and South Korea.” According to her, the Internet company Palo Alto Networks (PAN) has been studying the attacks and has finally traced them to Nigeria. The attacks are said to be perpetrated by the “same people behind the Nigerian 419 swindle, in which fraud artists try to trick foreign victims into transferring money to their bank accounts.”
The criminal operation has been given the name “Silver Spaniel,” by the attackers. An email with embedded malicious software is sent to potential victims. Upon clicking the attachment, you will inadvertently download the executable malicious software (NetWire) onto your computer, which will then take over the operating system in your computer. Another malicious software, DataScrambler, makes sure the NetWire program is undetectable by antivirus products.”
The Windows operating system (OS) might be more vulnerable to the attacks compared to Mac or Linux, because it provides more avenues for attackers to invade. Mac and Linux are Unix-based and therefore inherit Unix’ hierarchical system of privileges. As one blogger on this article points out: “you could hide the extension as RandomJPG.jpg.exe and off you go with an infection, but unfortunately, this won’t work on either Mac or Linux.” The blogger continues: “You would have to literally give it executable privileges to allow it to run, and could only really trash your home folder, but your system files would still be untouched.”
Ms. Perlroth goes into some details on the attacks: “The latest attacks, researchers say, are an example of how even unsophisticated actors can buy off-the-shelf hacking tools that allows them to spy on, and eventually steal from, victims without being detected by traditional antivirus products.” I tried to understand the motive behind this statement, but I am not quite sure. While I am not the type to quickly accuse people of racism, I find it difficult to rationalize some of the statements in Ms. Perlroth’s article. She appears to be a very careless, if not an insensitive, writer.
What on earth is a “Nigerian email swindle?” There are far more hackers, scammers, and swindlers in, say, America, than in Nigeria, but I have never heard of them being described as “American email swindlers.” Moreover, Ms. Perlroth goes further in her article to describe the hacking event as “Nigerian email swindle 2.0,” and further agreeing to PAN’s conclusion that  it is the same people behind the “Nigerian 419 swindle.” From the stories we read about the “419,” it is not the work of an individual or a single group. Unfortunately, neither Pan nor Ms. Perlroth is careful enough to provide evidence that allows them to make this conclusion. Just one common human element in “419” and Silver Spaniel will hardly warrant this conclusion.
How relevant is the statement: “Researcher said the attackers did not design the tools themselves, but got them from other hackers on underground hacking forums. DataScrambler can be leased for between $25 and $60, depending on how long criminals want to remain undetected as they record their victims’ keystrokes.” To me, this statement is totally irrelevant to the subject matter and Ms. Perlroth seems to have just thrown that in to suggest that the hackers were not capable of developing the malicious tools themselves. Incidentally, she is playing into the psyche of many Americans who can be exceedingly ignorant to believe that Africans are not capable of creating innovative tools. Having grown up in Nigeria but spent way more than half of my life in the U.S., it is easy for me to say that Nigerians are as smart as anyone on this planet, and can develop as harmful a malicious code as anyone, if the brilliant ones among Nigerians choose to do this. As a proof of this, just imagine the number of Nigerian-born immigrants in America and Europe who are creating first-rate technological innovations for the benefit of mankind.
To be sure, many of these attackers can be very careless, if not slothful. For example, some of them have not taken the steps to protect their IP addresses, a situation that makes it trivially easy to detect them. Furthermore, at least one of the attackers is said to have made repeated mentions of his use of the malware on his Facebook page. Obviously, this particular criminal is also stupid, but we cannot generalize that to mean that all attackers from Nigeria are careless and stupid. Let’s not forget that these criminals – both the cyber attackers and the famous 419 folks – do have victims, sometimes by the hundreds of thousands, and the victims are not usually Africans but innocent folks from Europe and America. Thus, we need to play down on the lack of sophistication of the criminals, for they are smart enough to successfully swindle folks.
Many bloggers do share my concern. I quote one: “Nonsense! NYT is pushing the defacement and stigmatization of a country for a crime that has been ongoing in the world for so many years now.” The blogger continues: “How convenient it is to publicly prosecute the Nigerian users of the phishing software without mentioning the country origins of people who are making money selling the software and processing the payments to the software vendors. The article is either ignorant or strategically racist.”
The take-away from this article is that some American journalists are so insensitive about the way they report cyber-crimes committed by a few Nigerians, as if we don’t have more of those crimes in America and elsewhere.