Chemical Spam

Last Friday Steven Partridge from ADT had an interesting blog posting over at ChemicalProcessing.com concerning an alert from the FBI about a bogus FBI letter that had been sent to at least a couple of chemical facilities. The letter asked for money for a ‘Clearance Certificate’ and threatened legal action if the money was not forthcoming.

Apparently this was an example of one of the more outrageous types of cons typically seen more often in electronic mail boxes than snail mail boxes. Most of us have seen at least a few of these leak past our spam filters. They are typically so over the top that one wonders how these folks ever get a response that makes their efforts pay off.

The only reason that I even mention this is that the electronic counterparts of these silly messages may actually pose a risk to chemical facilities. These emails may be so over the top that individuals might investigate the links in the message just to see ‘how stupid people really are’ just for the fun of it.

People need to be constantly reminded that their surfing through a properly crafted web site may be all that is necessary to place malware on their computer and the corporate network. Inadvertently inviting these folks behind the corporate firewall can be a first step along the road to compromising the manufacturing control system.