There's a new phish involving e-bay

[NV Whino]

Here's the fake e-mail. There was actually a file attached to this. Entirely too obvious. If you get it, notify e-bay. Don't open the file. Keep this kicked.


Dear Valued Customer,


The records show that our system caused a fatal error in our database and did not
record some of our user actions maybe including loss of your registration details.

To better serve you and every other user registered with us, we are sending all
of you a security tester and computer protection software to prevent this failure.
This software will protect you against illegal missuse of your account with us and
against online fraudulent actions (identity theft, credit card theft or ant
uncommon scam you can find over the internet)

We admit that this is our fault, but not our mistake so PROTECT YOURSELF NOW!

Please run the software that we sent you as an attachment and restart your computer
for the program to complete its securing process.

IMPORTANT: From now on please only use this computer for transactions with
eBay.com or if you change your workstation run the protection software each
time.

After you complete the entire process you will be several server failures and even
common or uncommon online fraud scams .


NOTICE: Run Attached eBay.com Protector Software
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you,
www.ebay.com Security Department

[WillowTree]

1. The first three words of that e-mail are the dead give-away.

No need to read any further before forwarding to [e-mail] and then deleting.

[DearAbby]

2. Yep. Sometimes I get some that are so full of spelling mistakes a

child or a RW Fundie must have written it...I kid you not

[NV Whino]

4. Yeah, even knowing immediately this was a spoof

(entirely too tame a word for this sort of thing, by the way) I read and reread the last paragraph trying to make sense of it.

[Bellamia]

3. Dear valued DUer

Thanks so much for your post, now I know what the weird email was, and what to do about it. I sent it to Spam, don't know if I can get it back.

[osiristz]

5. I delete all email from Ebay

only something pertaining directly to a particular Item number will I view. I get ebay crap all the time......click....it's gone!

[NV Whino]

6. Notify them when you get somthing bogus

They can't combat the problems if they don't know them.

[Coastie for Truth]

7. The phishing letter raises a "system failure" that the

commercial "mainframe" and "server" database management systems are not really susceptible to --

"The records show that our system caused a fatal error in our database and did not record some of our user actions maybe including loss of your registration details."

There is "logging" and physical redundancy - with the redeundant servers being on diagonally opposite coasts.

Also, the logging system is kind of neat. Briefly various database management system functions operate behind the scenes, preserving the value of the database and its contents. These "behind the scenes" operations include recovery logging and data replication.

In recovery logging, which is essential to eBay's system, as well as banking systems, credit card systems, etc. the system maintains a log or journal to keep track of all operations that affect the values of database items. This log or journal records the history of database changes in a secure way and contains details of all updates to the database. This recovery log includes "before" and "after" images of the state of an updated object. The "before" and "after" records mean that if it becomes necessary to undo some particular update, the system can use the corresponding recovery log entry to restore the updated object or value to the previous value.

The log consists of two portions, an "online" or "active" portion and an "archive" or "offline" portion. The "online" portion is the portion used during normal system operation to record details of the updates as they are performed, and is normally held on a local disk. When the online portion becomes full, or more frequently, its contents are transferred to the offline portion, which, because it is always processed sequentially, can be held on disk or in a tertiary storage device.

What is very important is that if the system crashes, it is possible to recover to a transaction consistent database state by examining the log and using various recovery algorithms.

The other "back up" is "replication." Replication is a process of maintaining a duplicate database, including database entries, and files, in more than one database at more then one geographical location. Replication involves copying (capturing) designated changes from one database (a source) and applying these designated changes to another database (a target). In banking, credit card, and auction systems the source and targets are can in different physical servers that are on different machines in a distributed network or different networks.

This is one of the many ways that banks, credit card companies, and eBay protect their data -- and user information. So, a fatal error in a database to not capture user actions is almost impossible. And, given logging and redundancy, complete loss of registration details or transaction details in even less possible.