As a space geek, I am subscribed to NASA’s HSFNEWS mailing list. When I looked at my mailbox this morning, a spam message that claimed to have been posted via the Nasa list server caught my attention. Obviously, it is quite easy to forge email and so I thought that this may be a fake, too. However, closer examination reveals headers that makes me think this could be a real thing.
Of course, HSFNEWS is just one of the many mailing lists NASA offers and also of course it is run on an auxiliary system, invalid messages slipping through can have quite bad effects. Of course, a message with subject
“[HSFNEWS] She’ll always want to give head now”
will hopefully immediately classified as spam by anyone (or do you think the message is about alien encounters? ;)). But what if the message would be much more carefully crafted to carry out something evil? After all, the message could look much like it comes from an official NASA source. Just think about the various Obama hoaxes and scams that we have seen lately?
I am still not 100% convinced that the mail actually originated from the NASA list server (I have tried to contact someone in charge over there and hope to get some results). To help you get an idea yourself, here is the complete message source, except a few things on my local delivery record as well as valid mail addresses that do not need to be posted here.
If someone has an opinion if the mail was run over NASA’s server, please post a comment or drop me a mail.
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Subject: [HSFNEWS] She’ll always want to give head now
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:25:34 +0100
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