"Olympic officials have turned to the federal courts in a bid to shut down two (of the great many) online companies suspected of stealing money, credit card information and passport numbers from people who thought they were buying scarce tickets to prime events in Beijing. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) won a restraining order July 23 in federal court that shut down one of the websites, www.beijing-tickets2008.com. On Monday, the USOC and IOC plan to ask a federal judge in San Francisco for an order to shut down www.beijingticketing.com, which remained active Friday. Both companies appeared to have been operating several related websites promising to deliver hard-to-find Olympics tickets. The websitesuse logos that look very similar to the official Olympic ones. The websitesÂ’ names also helped them appear atop search engine results. The sites said they could not deliver tickets until late in July, so many consumers did not realize that they had been taken until it was too late. While consumers who did business with the websites welcomed the court action, some questioned why it took officials so long to act. Officials at the USOC and IOC say that they are unable to provide tickets or refunds for consumers who have been duped. Olympic officials said consumers were told all along to deal only with an authorized ticket seller, New Jersey-based CoSport. Demand proved so strong that CoSport used a lottery to award tickets and quickly sold out."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-olytickets2-2008aug02,0,221914.story Yeah, why *did* it take so long? Why not contact the ISPs and hosting services? A group did that, to great effect, in real time during Katrina and Rita, searching for the hundreds of Websites that were being registered with the strings katrina, rita, hurricance, and "red cross" in the domain names. These guys are too used to trying to frighten anyone who might have the word "Olympic" in their advertising, like Olympia Pizza, which had existed for 25 years before the 2010 games came to town. (Made fine pizza, too. I recommend the deluxe.) ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Some people are like Slinkies. They're really good for nothing, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs. victoria.tc.ca/techrev/rms.htm blogs.securiteam.com/index.php/archives/author/p1/ _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
