Tell HN: Got a spam about “I recorded you” but with a twist
The meat of the spam text is pretty run of the mill spammy "i recorded you" (through your cam) SATISFYING YOURSELF.
But the problem is,
If you think this is some bad joke, no, I know your password: Something@234
which is the password i've used in some places so i suspect the spammer has gotten my email from some dump but this is pretty ingenious because all you have to give is the password and people might freak out.
edit: yes the email is in HIBP since ages
5 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 25.0 ms ] threadJohnBlue@5420.com
but that site is not accessible so maybe something something?
the ip address shows china ASN which is not surprising but yeah, first time seeing this targeted email..
oh, beyond using aliexpress, i have not used a chinese website in ages (btw which has the same password so maybe they had a breach?)
There was a time, when the Internet didn't look much like it does today - especially when UUCP reigned supreme - when nearly all email domains did not have associated IP addresses. Local ISP's that give custom email addresses to their users also nearly always do the same thing. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, look up how to do bang path email routing. It still works today, even if nobody does it.
The only part that matters is that the sending mail server can find an MX record for the receiving domain's mail server. There is no requirement for the named domain to have its own IP address as long as whatever domain the MX points to knows where to send the incoming mail.
I use a password manager, and change the passwords fairly often. So the first time I got one of these phishing attempts, I laughed and thought "Oh, so that's what my passwords look like!"
By that time, it was long-retired and so I don't even have a way to find out what site it was that had been compromised.