[SecurityRatty] tag: shares

Your 419 Mail Roundup

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:11:42 +0000

A handful of scam mails currently in circulation, including one mention of "groundnut oil" that seems so bizarre I had to highlight it in bold text. All this and more, after the jump...
Subject:
FROM THE DESK OF MR. STEVEN JAMES
From:
"Steven James"
Date:
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:17:03 +0100
BCC:

FROM THE DESK OF MR. STEVEN JAMES
CHAIRMAN INTERNATIONAL RELATION
FIRST BANK OF NIGERIA PLC
# 1 BANK ROAD WUSE FCT
ABUJA-NIGERIA.
PHONE: +234-80-66520277
Email: stevenjames809@live.co.uk

Very Urgent Attention,

Please permit me to introduce my humble self to you, my name is Mr. Steven James, I am the Manager of International Relation with First Bank of Nigeria Plc, I 'm 38yrs old, and I got your email address from a friend of mine, and my confidence reposed on you. I hope you read this message carefully and reply me immediately. Although we have not met before, but I suggest that this transaction will bring us together.

My dear, we had a customer, a foreigner but base here in Nigeria, his Name was Mr. Hamilton Creek. He is from Atlanta Georgia United State of America, but based here with his wife and his two children, Mr. Hamilton has being banking with us for the past 4yrs and some time in August 2002, Mr. Hamilton was on his way to his house, and unfortunately ran into a Trailer load of Groundnut Oil, and died   immediately, Their car got burnt, no single soul was saved, Mr. Hamilton Creek and His entire family was confirmed dead.

My Board of Directors and the Management of First Bank has mandated and instructed me to look for Mr. Hamilton Creek? Relation(s) and his Next of Kin to come and claim his fund, Since August 2003 till date, I have been looking for his relation's or his next of Kin to come and claim his fund which he Deposited with our bank, I have contacted his Embassy and after 3days, his Ambassador told me that Mr. Hamilton Creek has no relation and no next of Kin, their Ambassador told me that he used his first son as His next of kin, but it is quite unfortunate that Mr. Hamilton Creek Died with all his family members.

The reason why I contacted you is thus, Mr. Hamilton is dead, and his only son who supposed to inherit his properties and money also died with him. As at this moment, nobody or person[s] is coming to   claim this Money from our bank. The Board of Directors and management of our bank told me that if nobody or person[s] apply for the claim of Mr. Hamilton Fund, the bank will return the entire Fund into our Federal reserve. In the Light of the above, I want you to stand as the next of kin to Late Mr. Hamilton Creek; it might interest you to know that he had a Domiciliary Bank Account with our Bank and he has a total sum of US$9.2M Nine Million Two Hundred thousand Dollars, this is the exact amount which he had in his domiciliary account before the ugly incident occurred, and this money is still in his account as unclaimed money.

This transaction is very easy and simple, and it is 100% risk free, I'm the Manager for International Relations with First Bank of Nigeria Plc, and the Management and Board of Directors of the Bank are waiting for me to provide to them the Relation or next of Kin to late Mr. Hamilton Creek, of which I told them that I am still searching the next of kin to the deceased. Finally, if you are interested with this transaction, I will front you to the bank as the only next of kin to late Mr. Hamilton Creek, and I will let the bank know that you are the only right person to inherit Late Mr. Hamilton Funds and properties. If you are interested, just email me or call me on my   direct and private line#: +234-80-27536038 and late Mr. Hamilton's Funds will be credited into your account and all his Properties will be released to you either through Courier Services or the Bank will Cargo all his properties to you in any were you want it.

So reply me immediately and feel free to ask any question with regards to this transaction. You will take 50% of the US$9.2M. Which is? US$4.600, 000.00 Four Million Six Hundred Thousand Dollars, while the Balance of the same amount will be mine.

Your swift response will be highly appreciated.

Thanks and have a nice day.

Friendly Regards

Mr. Steven James

*******************************************************************************************

Subject:
REPRESENTATIVE NEEDED
From:
DFS SALES LTD UK
Date:
Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:00:55 +0800
To:
undisclosed-recipients: ;

COMPLIMENT OF THE DAY TO YOU.

I am PETER WOODS from DFS SALES LTD UK.(
Website: www.dfs-online.co.uk ) Visit our site

We are into furnitures and we sell shares to people in
Canada,America, Australia and Europe.

We are in need of a book keeper. someone who can represent our company
in his/her country.

Our client in your location will contact you and make the company
payment to you.

You will be entitle to 11% of every payment been made out to you.

This is because most of our officer are from china and they do not

understand english very well.its hard for them to contact our
customers.

Our head office is located in CHINA. But we have a sub-office in the
uk.

If you are interested, Kindly send the entries for more understanding.

NAME IN FULL :.........
COMPANY NAME: .....
POSITION:......
FULL ADDRESS: .......
CITY/TOWN:........
STATE:............
ZIP CODE:........
COUNTRY:.......
MOBILE:.......
HOME TEL: .....
EMAIL ADDRESS: ........
OCCUPATION: ...........
BANK NAME :.......
AGE:............

You are to send the above details to

NAME : PETER WOODS.
EMAIL : dfs_woods@yahoo.co.uk
PHONE NUMBER : +44-704-575-0212

HOPE TO HEAR FROM YOU

*****************************************************************************************

To:
undisclosed-recipients:;

Good day!!!

We have been waiting for you since to contact me for your Confirmable Bank Draft of ?18 Million (Eighteen Million Pounds sterling) but we did not hear from you since for a couple of weeks now. Then we went to the bank to confirm if the draft that expired or getting near to expire and Metropolitan Police Uk told us that before the funds will get to your hand that it will expire.So I told him to cash the ?18 Million (Eighteen Million Pounds sterling) to cash payment to avoid losing this fund under expiration as I will be out of the country for a 6 Months Course.

What you have to do now is to contact FED EX COURIER SERVICES as soon as possible to know when they will deliver of your funds to you because of the expiring date. For your information we have paid for the delivering Charge Insurance premium. The only money you will send to the FED EX COURIER SERVICES to deliver your cheque direct to your postal Address in your country is ?250.00 being Security Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far. Again don't be deceived by anybody to pay any other money except ?250.00 for the Security Keeping Fee.We would have paid that but they said no because they don't know when you will contact them and in case of demurrage. You have to contact FED EX COURIER SERVICES now for the delivery of your Draft with this
information below:

CONTROLLER: Mrs.Helen Williams
NAME: FED EX COURIER SERVICES
ADDRESS: fedexofficeuk@gmail.com
PHONE NUMBER: +447024080684

IF YOU ARE THE OWENER OF THE FUNDS AND YOU WILL SEND YOUR INFORMATION TO US SO THAT WE CAN DELIVERY YOUR FUNDS TO YOU WITHIN THE NEXT 84HRS TIME.IF YOU DO NOT RECEIVED YOUR FUNDS WITHIN THE NEXT 72HRS TIME AND YOU REPORT US THE UK FBI AND THE METROPOLITAN POLICE (SCOTLAND YARD) or YOU CONTACT YOUR LAWYER TO TAKE UP PROCEDURES AGAINST US.

Let me repeat again try to contact them as soon as you receive this mail to avoid any further delay and remember to pay them their Security keeping fee of ?250.00 for their immediate action. The FED EX COURIER SERVICES don't know the contents of the funds. This is to avoid them delaying with the funds.

Thanks as you contact them today.

Yours Faithfully

Mrs Helen Williams.

(The above actually comes with a nifty graphic that they've thrown in, thinking it makes it all look more legitimate. It doesn't, but here it is anyway):

....altogether now: oooooh. A slightly shorter 419 roundup than usual, but I'm sure I'll have piles of the things next week.

Protect everything? Is that a better DLP?

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:19:00 +0000

I was reading an interesting post about DLP at Securosis. Rich has deep expertise and an excellent way of explaining what the area is all about...

However, the post got me thinking - how do we reliably understand content in order to differentiate and protect what's important? Do we have easy to manage policies yet? Can the policies adapt easily based on chaning business? Is the technology ready?

I do see traditional DLP solutions being very complementary to data encryption products - one identifies it, finds it and the other can protect it. Nice and easy.

However, I am thinking that maybe an interim step might also be needed before we can get to nirvana of understanding content, proactive policies etc. What if we are able to protect all data (or even data that are on these file shares, laptops etc ) regardless of what is in them - and keep them persistently protected at rest and in motion? Think of it as the blunt approach - similar to using FDE to protect all the contents within a hard drive regardless of the sensitivity of an individual file within.

From a customer perspective, they don't want anyone without the right authorization to see any data - that's all. This can be achieved by persistent, data-centric or information-centric protection without any differentiation based on understanding the content.

Could/should DLP be redefined, thus?

Mainframe vulnerabilities: Be proactive rather than reactive

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:44:24 +0000

What mainframe administrators really need is a discussion of mainframe vulnerabilities. Problem areas include user authentication, system dataset access, disgruntled employees, denial of service attacks, and consoles and monitors that open the system to security breaches. Author Robert Crawford shares his observations about mainframe vulnerabilities, and encourages readers to write in and share their own experiences.

Mainframe vulnerabilities: Be proactive rather than reactive

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:44:24 +0000

Sun Is A Magic Formula Stock

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:29:33 +0000

http://www.magicformulainvesting.comIn his book "The Little Book that Beats the Market", Joel Greenblatt presents a formula for investing in companies based on two factors. The factors are from two of the most influential people in teaching investors how to think about investing - Ben Graham and Warren Buffett. From Graham, Greenblatt takes the concept of price, specifically looking for cheap stocks not necessarily great companies, just a great price (Graham famously called these "cigar butts"); from Buffett & Munger, Greenblatt uses the concept of looking for good companies.

The stocks are evaluated on price via an inverse P/E calculation; and "good" companies are defined as those earning a high return on capital. Then in true value investing style (i.e. not over-complicated), Greenblatt combines the two factors using a simple 50/50 format. So all companies are rated by price and quality, if your company comes up 11 on price and 27 on quality then it gets a 38. His book goes into more details, and you can use this website to screen for companies.

What do you think would happen if we simply decided to buy shares in companies that had both a high earnings yield and a high return on capital? In other words, what would happen if we decided to only buy shares in good businesses (ones with high returns on capital) but only when they were available at bargain prices (priced to give us a high earnings yield)? What would happen? Well, I'll tell you what would happen: We would make a lot of money! (Or as Graham might put it, "The profits would be quite satisfactory!")

A lot of the time you find pretty boring companies doing something profitable and necessary, but not too exciting. There are generally not very many tech companies on the list - Microsoft is there now because of the Yahoo stuff, Microstrategy has been there for awhile, and now we have Sun (JAVA) there as well.

Being on the Magic Formula list is not necessarily a good thing for your present stock price. It means you are being beat up, fairly on unfairly going forward is the question. Greenblatt's formula suggests its worth looking at Sun's potential going forward. Their P/E is 15 (for comparison Oracle's is 22 and Red Hat's in 59!), good news for Sun shareholders is the company continues to make money. One problem seems to be margins - Sun is earning 4.6% net profit margins whereas Oracle and Red Hat are at 24% and 14% respectively. Of course, in general margins on hardware are not generally as good and Oracle and Red Hat are software plays.

In any case Schwartz seems to be doing some smart things and positioning Sun for quite satisfactory returns. Sun's Price/Book ratio is just above 1.5 which makes a value investor sit up and take notice. A pretty impressive list of investors, notably Mason Hawkins, has been buying in. As much as Sun has struggled with its post-dotcom identity, it is rare to see a company with this much upside on the Greenblatt list.

Anyhow, Sun's residency on the Greenblatt is not a good thing for the company this instant. It could mean good opportunities for them and investors going forward - after all its a list of good companies selling at cheap prices. I have no position in any of the companies mentioned, and I have no business giving people investing advice, but I am interested observer. If you are thinking of buying JAVA based on Greenblatt's quantitative methods, read his book first to understand how to manage risk in his methodology. In any case I wholeheartedly recommend Greenblatt's book, its short, and packed with good stuff.

Application modernization in the i world

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:30:30 +0000

Modernizing one of the most efficient interfaces ever designed may be a bit tricky. On the AS/400, application modernization means making the best use out of your existing application programs and especially your application programmers. Joe Pluta shares the three options for modernization on the i: refacing, replacing, and rewriting.

Web 2.0 Adoption by the Federal Government Shouldnt be a Surprise

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:33:34 +0000

Driving back from the dentist today, I was listening to a WTOP story about the adoption of Web 2.0 by the government. With half my mouth numb from being shot up with anesthetics, I decided this was the perfect time to do a blog post on this.

Back at the FOSE show in April, we conducted a survey and one of the questions asked was about Web 2.0 usage. Honestly, we expected low adoption of these kinds of collaborative and often very public communications tools and were very surprised by the results.

Over 65% of government IT workers surveyed said that Web 2.0 tools are important to their operations. 20% were currently using things like wikis, blogs and RSS feeds with over 50% more planning on having these tools in place by next year.

Our take: many of the Web 2.0 tools are cheap or even free. Of course there are some server and maintenance costs, but the costs of Web 2.0 solutions are a drop in the bucket compared to other federal IT projects. You’ve heard the stories. Most of these tools are easy to get up and running and don’t require extensive training to be an active user.

Basically, our expectation of low adoption was rooted in the idea that the federal government would have more policies, i.e., restrictions, around usage and tighter controls around content and the dissemination of information. Interestingly, I just met someone who worked in the Air Force’s public affairs office at BlogPotomac, a local social media event. He told me that he was there because the Air Force already had multiple blogs across what is obviously a very big organization, but that there was no single policy around blogging. Surprising and the opposite of what we thought.

Perhaps in the end, the ease and speed of adoption and the speed of social media conversations are outstripping the agencies’ ability to get in front of them. And that’s a big lesson learned for agencies and enterprises alike.

Another note: check out this presentation by Chris Rasmussen, Knowledge Management Officer, Intellipedia, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense (yes, that’s the title they published for him) from FCW’s Spring Government CIO Summit on the use of social media software within the US intelligence community. It’s pretty funny and has nuggets of good info for anyone looking at adopting these tools.

Guess what? Government agency management and communications officers have the same issues and fears that enterprises do. What if people give away (trade) secrets? What if people drop the “f-bomb”? Possibly the funniest thing in the recording of Rasmussen’s presentation is when he shares the “worst” blog comment that he got on Intellipedia where someone likens him to traitors like Chris Hansen…for doing a blog.

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There is very little RPG on System i can't do: From RPG nay to RPG yay!

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:20:16 +0000

Some are skeptical of RPG on System i's ability to do much outside of a green screen. But a RPG believer Aaron Bartell shares how to create graphical pie, bar, and line charts with RPG and a bit of Java along with some free code-sets. He describes the RPG Chart Engine tool (free open source) that he has created, and explains the coding and functions of this iSeries tool.

Making the Business Case to Upper Management, Purchasing EM7: Hughes Interview, Part 2

Fri, 30 May 2008 09:00:37 +0000

The fact that Hughes is raising $112 million in a public offering of stock will not let Karl off the hook for justifying systems and network monitoring costs to upper management.

We go back in time a bit, and Karl shares his experience with justifying the purchase of EM7 a year and a half ago. Beyond cost comparisons, replacing already-installed market leader HP Openview with upstart EM7 required more explaining about additional features, extended value to the business and long-term viability. For those of you finding yourselves in a similar boat, we hope this helps.

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Making the Business Case to Upper Management, Purchasing EM7: Hughes Interview, Part 2

Fri, 30 May 2008 09:00:37 +0000

The fact that Hughes is raising $112 million in a public offering of stock will not let Karl off the hook for justifying systems and network monitoring costs to upper management.

ShareThis