“I know and now, I am getting phone calls and email replies from all my contacts asking
me why I sent them this bad link and so happens is that one of them is my boss who is
blaming me”, said Henry frantically.
“I thought I could trust you!” said Henry’s boss. And Henry kept rambling on and on.
After I calmed down Henry, I then proceed to look over the suspicious email that he had
sent to me only a few moments ago. Here is a screenshot of what his email looked like.
Almost immediately, a number of red flags go up as I, The Hacker Detective, get to the
bottom of it. First rule of detective work is informing the clients to never click any links from
random anonymous emails no matter how legit it might be. Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust
but verify!”—and very good words to live by. The reason is Henry could have a malevolent
virus installed onto his computer stealing his passwords, user names, or other personnel information (i.e. bank accounts, social security numbers, credit cards, key dates, etc.). By
clicking the link and Henry entering his new information the hacker is stealing his information
once he press sends. All Henry sees is a link that says the email originated from
“technicalservices.com” when in fact the email can be disguised and instead your information sent straight to my hotmail account. Actually, hackers will masquerade as someone
else’s identity with made up (spoofed) email names and spoofed email addresses to gain
access to targeted system. An elite hacker will cover up his malicious intent even further by
embedding a Trojan virus (i.e. ACAD/Medre.A) inside a link and when you click the link he
or she downloads a worm for the hacker to steal your information and finally deleting its
tracks.