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Phishing the U.S. Navy Marine Corps Intranet

by Toby Ward on Mon 20 Mar 2006 12:49 AM PST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Those scam artists are getting bold. The ROI from the Nigerian and Cameroon email scams are no longer the bounty they once were despite the compelling and well-written tales of woe and potential riches. Fool me once shame on me. Fool me twice… well Bush got re-elected so it’s no surprise phishing works; even in the U.S. military.

Phishing of course is the rarified art of fraudulently obtaining an Internet user’s personal information – such as banking information – for criminal gain. The famous ones are of course the aforementioned Nigerian and Cameroon scams where the son of a former head of the national bank needs just a little cash to free up $10 million just sitting in some bank corner and waiting for your little ante. Of course, your little ante is worth at least a million or more if you’re willing to back this get-rich-quick plan of a most noble Nigerian aristocrat. God bless that they could find your e-mail address to let you know of this fabulous opportunity! Hey if they can find $10 million…maybe they know where to find all my lost socks from the dryer…??!!?

The big dog phishers have strapped-on a big set of brass you-know-whats and are now phising U.S. Navy and Marine Corps soldiers and civilians using the world’s biggest intranet – the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI).

NMCI headquarters has warned Navy and Marine Corps intranet users of a scam involving the myPay website, run by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service's (DFAS) myPay website. DFAS are the very small, naive and easily conned group who pay military people and contractors – more than 20 million of them – more than US $530 billion every year. Small fry.

NavyCompass.com reports (see Phishers scamming with myPay) that NMCI users get emails that resemble something like the following:

"Hello user of navy.mil email server, our main mailing server will be temporary unavailable for next two days, to continue receiving mail in these days you have to configure our free auto-forwarding server. For details see the attach. Password: Kind regards, the Navy.mil team. http:/www.navy.mil."

Hmmmm, misspelled words, bad grammar, and no sender name – an uncannily lame attempt altogether. Yup, these must be those poor sons of former Nigerian dictators! Man, the kahonas to go after the U.S. Military… but I can see the leap in logic: “Hey, remember those grandmas we scammed with that Nigerian bank thing!?! Let’s try the U.S. Navy AND Marine Corps!! Man, those guys are so gullible!!”

Despite the eloquent prose waxing poetic contained in the phish email, the Navy has issued a warning (in case there people were born yesterday or within a few weeks of yesterday):

NMCI Users who get emails or popups requesting personal information for "legitimate" reasons should contact the agency directly if they suspect they're a being targeted by phishers. Supervisors should train new workers on typical scams, and advise the chain of command and NMCI if repeated attempts are being made to infiltrate DOD information systems and obtain sensitive information.

If these great criminal minds are phising the U.S. military, it’s for a reason – because it’s working. Sadly, but likely true. Now, if these klowns (no relation to Krusy) are duping soldiers who are normally kind of cautious folks, then they can fool your employees too. Better make sure your security polices are up-to-date, well-publicized and communicated often.