[HN Gopher] FBI, Dutch police disrupt 'Manipulaters' phishing gang
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       FBI, Dutch police disrupt 'Manipulaters' phishing gang
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 127 points
       Date   : 2025-01-31 18:36 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (krebsonsecurity.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (krebsonsecurity.com)
        
       | Fnoord wrote:
       | Probably the last time the Dutch police cooperates with the US
       | government. What a time to be alive...
        
         | hhh wrote:
         | Why would it be the last? They have a long and vibrant history
         | of collaboration.
        
           | compootr wrote:
           | re: the new administration
        
             | riedel wrote:
             | There is claims that the current dutch administration kind
             | of invented their new US counterpart:
             | https://www.politico.eu/article/the-man-who-invented-
             | trumpis...
        
               | Fnoord wrote:
               | That guy ain't doing EO's. He ain't even leading the
               | country; Dick Schoof does. Well, on paper, at least.
        
               | vanderZwan wrote:
               | That's... a very naive take imo. Wilders is a far-right
               | populist like Trump, and they have many other
               | similarities, but they also have some very crucial
               | differences. A very important one being that Trump is a
               | figure-head leader but actually a puppet of other forces,
               | while Wilders avoids being prime minister at all costs so
               | he can keep playing the role of a reactionary politician
               | complaining about bad leadership while making everyone
               | dependent on him.
        
               | AnimalMuppet wrote:
               | Who, specifically, do you claim that Trump is a puppet
               | of, and why?
        
               | bobxmax wrote:
               | Wilders is also a fair bit more extreme than Trump.
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | Trump has a high statistical odds of dieing before the end
             | of his term because of old age. (I doubt anyone will
             | assassinate him, but that is also possible for any leader
             | of a country). There will be more changes in administration
             | - there always are.
        
               | Larrikin wrote:
               | There is no statistical evidence of this when compared to
               | presidents and not the general public. Seems like most
               | presidents after World War 2 live a very long time if
               | they are not assassinated.
               | 
               | https://potus.com/presidential-facts/presidents-age-at-
               | death...
        
               | bluGill wrote:
               | I'm not quite sure how to calculate these statistics, but
               | as I read the charts, it looks like someone his age has
               | about a 25% chance of dieing in the next 4 years. Even in
               | the worst (best?) case, he has near zero change of 25
               | more years, which means most reading this will outlive
               | him.
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | but most aren't morbidly obese no?
        
               | InitialLastName wrote:
               | The 4 post-WWII ex-presidents who outlived Trump circa
               | 2028 (Bush Sr, Reagan, Ford, Carter) were all notable for
               | their health and athleticism, which Trump isn't.
        
               | rafram wrote:
               | I would not say that Reagan, who famously developed
               | Alzheimer's while in office, was notable for his health.
               | But he was already fairly old when he took office.
        
               | asveikau wrote:
               | > I doubt anyone will assassinate him, but that is also
               | possible for any leader of a country
               | 
               | After the incidents during the campaign I imagine Trump
               | is very paranoid, mostly stays safely indoors and
               | minimizes time in public. I haven't heard anyone say so
               | but I suspected that was one reason he had an indoor
               | inauguration (along with the other reasons people
               | speculated about).
        
               | prmoustache wrote:
               | he might have more probbility to crash on the new Boeing
               | air force one replacements he asked Musk to help speedup
               | the delivery.
        
               | TeaBrain wrote:
               | The temperature itself was probably reason enough. It was
               | the coldest inauguration since 1985 and the inauguration
               | was held inside that year also.
        
               | IncreasePosts wrote:
               | Maybe from straight actuarial tables, but those don't
               | take into account Trump's incredible wealth, immediate
               | access to the greatest doctors in the world, nor the fact
               | that his parents lived until 88 & 93 years old.
               | 
               | Edit: actually, even actuarial tables give a 78 year old
               | a 50% chance of living another 9 years.
        
               | pavel_lishin wrote:
               | Sure. Do you think Mr. Vance has significantly different
               | politics?
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | I don't think Vance has a real sense of anything other
               | than being a lap dog. Not all seconds make great firsts.
        
               | bobxmax wrote:
               | Not all seconds make great seconds either.
        
               | AngryData wrote:
               | On the other hand the president has basically medical
               | staff on standby all the time just for them with the
               | quickest humanly possible access to any and every medical
               | advancement in existence.
               | 
               | And keeping old people limping along for as long as
               | possible is one thing US medical care is great at, so
               | long as they can pay for it. If it takes $1,000,000 per
               | week to keep them alive, as long as the check clears they
               | will move heaven and earth to keep them going, and the
               | president effectively has infinite medical care credit
               | through the state.
        
           | solumunus wrote:
           | The reasons are obvious, you're clearly playing dumb.
        
           | Fnoord wrote:
           | > Why would it be the last? They have a long and vibrant
           | history of collaboration.
           | 
           | I suppose the FBI ends up being a partisan agency, like all
           | other US government agencies.
           | 
           | Regardless, if trust is eroded between countries [1] [2] [3],
           | why would the police of these countries cooperate, and share
           | intel?
           | 
           | [1] Threaten those in NATO paying < 5% of annual budget to
           | defense won't be protected by US (the US pays less).
           | 
           | [2] Threatening a colony of a NATO partner (Greenland, of
           | Denmark).
           | 
           | [3] Threaten all your [now former] friends with tariffs.
           | 
           | FVEY is dead. NATO is dead. And any cooperation between US
           | and NL is also dead. However, CA and AU might increase their
           | cooperation with EU.
        
             | tokioyoyo wrote:
             | Well, I genuinely hope our governments start getting in
             | talks with China.
        
             | rafram wrote:
             | To be precise, the NATO target is 5% of _GDP_. The US
             | spends 13.3% of its budget on defense, but only 3.4% of
             | GDP.
        
             | terrabiped wrote:
             | 1. I think it's also fair to say that since the interview,
             | Mark Rutte has come out and said that NATO countries need
             | to increase their spending to be able to protect
             | themselves. Countries like Poland, Sweden, and Lithuania
             | (possibly more, though I haven't followed this closely)
             | have shared the same opinion. Paraphrasing Tusk's comments,
             | wanting your allies to be stronger can hardly be considered
             | a hostile move.
             | 
             | 2. The only thing to add here is that, over time, this has
             | morphed from "not ruling out the use of force" to
             | "threatening the use of force." Either way, I agree, it's
             | not a good look.
             | 
             | 3. To counterbalance, the EU has been using US tech
             | companies as a piggy bank for many years now, yet that
             | hasn't hindered collaboration between the US and Europe.
             | 
             | NATO isn't dead but is likely only going to grow stronger.
             | FVEY will probably continue, especially on initiatives
             | where everyone stands to benefit.
        
       | Larrikin wrote:
       | Wonder how many of them will be fired by Monday.
        
       | jamisonbryant wrote:
       | A Fire Department that I volunteered with in Rockville, MD was
       | scammed out of a three-quarter-mil. vendor payment for a state-
       | of-the-art Rescue Squad/Ambulance because of a hijacked email
       | chain. I wonder if it was this crew.
        
         | ActionHank wrote:
         | How does this even happen?
         | 
         | So there's someone back and forth in an email chain with
         | someone from Big Ambulance Inc negotiating price and agree to
         | proceed with sale and then what?
        
           | colechristensen wrote:
           | And then somebody sends you an invoice, they aren't who you
           | think they are, and you wire their bank account to pay the
           | invoice. They remove the money from their account, hide its
           | origins through various laundering methods, and move on.
        
           | unyttigfjelltol wrote:
           | A hacker interjects malicious payment instructions by
           | hijacking a trusted communication channel.
        
           | _DeadFred_ wrote:
           | When I was in IT our company would get emails from slight
           | mis-spellings of our domain name claiming to be our CEO, CFO.
           | Our vendors would also routinely get hacked and the hackers
           | would send emails from the vendor's legit email
           | clients/network requesting we change how we paid them.
        
             | amatecha wrote:
             | This sounds like what happens with Hotels.com where the
             | hotel you just booked with said there was an issue with the
             | payment that was submitted, and you must pay with this
             | alternate payment method instead -- it turns out the
             | hotel's account had been compromised and the
             | thief/scumbag/scammer does this to all the hotel's
             | bookings. The one we got a message from, apparently the
             | respective hotel keeps having this happen over and over. My
             | guess is the outdated computer they use has a keylogger or
             | trojan on it and their accounts will just be forever
             | compromised. Fun times.
             | 
             | Some posts about this:
             | 
             | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67583486
             | 
             | https://perception-point.io/blog/booking-com-customers-
             | hit-b... (same thing happening to booking.com)
             | 
             | https://old.reddit.com/r/travel/comments/19dk51w/bookingcom
             | _...
        
               | bongodongobob wrote:
               | I did some contract work for a major hotel chain a few
               | years ago (Windows 2012 server upgrades) and was
               | horrified by their utter lack of security everywhere.
               | Everything was out of date, no patching, super simple
               | admin passwords everywhere. It was crazy. They did have
               | corporate level IT, but from what I remember, it wasn't
               | for any infra, just their hotel related software.
               | 
               | Don't connect to hotel wifi, or if you do, don't do
               | anything important on it.
        
               | itsgrimetime wrote:
               | or someone from the hotel was in on it
        
         | mtillman wrote:
         | This is a very common event. Anglo American sent $17M to an
         | email scammer years ago but it happens constantly in America
         | too. We had to build a ton of detectors to eliminate this type
         | of fraud for our customers at OpenEnvoy. Bank details, email
         | metadata, character/symbol swap verification. All sorts of
         | things to just keep this one very common thing from happening.
        
       | spiderfarmer wrote:
       | I'm pretty sure we will cooperate with FBI a lot less the coming
       | 4 years.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-02-01 08:00 UTC)