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Net Gains (Oct 23, 98) |
Last week I received many emails, all asking just one question:
"Is this for real?" The senders were referring to an
email that was sent from the students' shell accounts helpdesk
offering students TCP/IP access from November 1st at
a dirt-cheap rate of Rs. 2000/- for 500 hours. And for students
who have been deprived of graphical access (unless of course they
managed to get a TCP/IP password from their friends), this was
a god-send. Especially since people pay Rs. 10,000 for the same
account otherwise. But as the unspoken law ruled, if it's too
true to be good, it probably is -this offer that thousands of
students all over the city got in their email was a big hoax.
But the thousands of students who immediately emailed the address
given as per instructions in the email (below) believed it to
be true and were disappointed when their mail bounced back.
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1998 04:34:00
From: VSNL System Admin <[email protected]>
Subject: TCP/IP for students
Dear Internet User,
As a continuing effort to provide you with
the best of our services, we have decided to permit TCP/IP access
for students with effect from 1 November 1998.
The costs involved are:
TCP/IP access (500 hours) Rs
2000 per annum
Students desirous or taking up this facility
will be given due credit for the number of unused hours on thier
shell accounts. This facility is presently open to students who
presently have a students account at vsnl only.
Please register yourself by mailing [email protected]
as soon as possible (we have limited capacity at present). Accounts
will be given on a first come first serve basis. Details about
payment will be subsequently mailed to you.
Due to the low receipts from students shell
accounts, we are now unable to cope up with the costs and have
decided to discontinue issue of new shell accounts for students.
We have now stoped accepting any new registrations. Any complaints
in this matter should be filed in writing at our fort office.
with warm regards,
System Administrator
GIAS
"Always at
your help"
-----------------0-help-0---------------------------
email :
[email protected]
www :
http://guide.vsnl.net.in (New!!)
News
: vsnl.feedback.internet
-------------------0-desk-0-------------------------
For those who looked the gift horse in the mouth, the fact dawned
that this was a hoax and not sent by the VSNL staff. For one,
such a good offer would have been milked dry by VSNLs PR department,
and not made quietly via a small email sent to the students. Secondly,
the email address that students were supposed to send mail to,
in order to register would not have been an arbitrary email address
([email protected]), but would have been an official address
like [email protected]. And any official offer from
VSNL would have had details about payment included - unlike this
one which said that payment details would be given later. Finally,
the email would have gone out to all the users and not just some
student account holders. This happened because the person who
sent the fraudulent email used an older subscriber list of student
account addresses.
As with most of these incidents, within a week, a group calling
themselves "Divine Hackers" claimed responsibility for
the hoax mail, saying that they did it to make their presence
felt and to expose the security lapses in VSNL's service. Now
while VSNL's not laughing, they have not yet issued any notice
about the incident, and the helpdesk was of no help. The benefits
of being a monopolist ISP - you can get away with anything, and
you're not accountable - a good lesson being taught to the next
generation of people who will be ruling the industry tomorrow!
The end result - everyone involved in the episode ended up looking
like bad guys.
Another India-related fraud in cyberspace took place when an Indian
site (www.armyinkashmir.com) was hacked last week. The site was
originally set up in August to present our stand on Kashmir, and
received thousands of hits each week since then. But people who
visited the site since last week were redirected to another page
that has a distinct anti-India flavour with "stop the Indians"
and "save Kashmir" boldly displayed. The last line of
the page mentions that "this site is currently maintained
by many people who feel for Kashmiris and on going massacre in
kashmir under the control of Indian Army."
Looks like the wrong kind of people have been working overtime
in Cyberia!