Pfizer zombies send Viagra spam, Wired reports

Zombie Pfizer Computers Spew Viagra Spam

By Ryan Singel 09.06.07 | 2:00 AM

Computers inside pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's network are spamming the internet with e-mails touting the company's flagship erectile-enhancement drug Viagra, along with ads for knockoff Rolexes and shady junk stocks.

But the e-mails are not part of Pfizer's official marketing efforts.

Pfizer's computers appear to have been infected with malware that has transformed them into zombie computers sending spam at the behest of a hacker. Oddly enough, they are spamming the public's inboxes with ads for the company's own product.

"There is a disaster inside this company, and they don't know it," says Rick Wesson, CEO of Support Intelligence -- a small San Francisco-based security company that alerted Wired News to the problem.

The flood of spam adds to Pfizer's recent computer security woes. This summer, the company revealed that it had suffered three breaches of sensitive data, cumulatively affecting more than 50,000 individuals.

In one breach, a Pfizer employee exposed personal information on 17,000 employees after installing peer-to-peer software on a laptop. In another breach, confirmed Tuesday, a former employee downloaded sensitive data, including social security numbers and credit-card information for about 34,000 Pfizer employees.

Full story at Wired.

The reason why all these lottery notifications always come from Holland

iDeceive has a link that explains why so many of the lottery winning noifications you get in your email are coming from Netherland.

Dutch police arrest 111 West Africans in 419 clampdown

Dutch police have arrested 111 suspected 419 scammers. The arrests on Saturday follow the end of a seven-month investigation - dubbed Operation Apollo, AFP reports.

Eight of those detained were carrying false papers. Many others among the group of West African (mainly Nigerian) suspects are reckoned to have entered the Netherlands illegally or to have overstayed their permitted stay.

The alleged scammers are suspected of running a series of lottery-based (AKA 419-lite) scams. Prospective victims of these frauds are first informed by email that they have won fictitious lottery prizes. Victims are then tricked into handing over money-up front to cover processing fees or other fictitious expenses. The promised windfalls never materialise and dupes are left nursing their losses.
Investigators in the Netherlands estimate that 2,000 internet con-men are active in the country.

Unrelated but interesting : Harvard prof scams $600,000, then hands it to 419ers