A cleverly-constructed phishing attack

I just got a quite clever phishing attack against WaMu customers.  The "message body" is actually a GIF image, with some junk text attached in an attempt to get it past spam filters.  The GIF is actually linked to the WaMu URL that the body text in the GIF claims you're going to ... but underneath the link, the whole GIF is imagemapped elsewhere, which won't be visible in the browser because the link masks it.

Bastards are getting sneakier.

For the curious, a gzipped text dump of the complete message can be found here.

Mixed news

The good:  I have a phone interview tomorrow¹ and, with an absence of ill luck, may shortly be employed again and out of North Festering Carolina.  (About the only good thing I can think of to say about this particular patch of it is that vehicle license fees are low.)

The bad:  It seems the bottom of my left foot may be breaking down in a new place, under the ball of my foot this time.  It was always a possibility, given that we successfully got the weight off my toe but without any real ability to get much of it onto my heel.

[1]  That's Monday, for the chronologically confused.  ;-)

Promising signs from Palestine

It was reported earlier that Hamas had announced their backing for moderate Mahmoud Abbas to become Palestinian President, but that Fatah had declared Marwan Baghouti (currently in jail) might run as well.  Now, Baghouti has said he will not run and has endorsed Abbas, and the various wings of Fatah's militant al'Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade faction have come together to issue a joint statement backing Abbas.

Mahmoud Abbas, who formerly held the post of Prime Minister under Yasser Arafat but resigned in disgust over Arafat's stonewalling of peace efforts, is the new Chairman of the PLO and is now the leading candidate for the Presidency.  He has consistently and outspokenly opposed the armed intifada.  Israeli PM Ariel Sharon has said that he is ready to meet with Mahmoud Abbas, and that Israel would keep its troops away from Palestinian towns during the election (scheduled for January 9) "to enable them to conduct their elections with as little interference as possible".  Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has disbanded a Gaza security unit, the Department of Protection and Security, citing human rights abuses and criminal activities, as part of the process of overhauling the Palestinian security apparatus.

This is looking more and more promising for the prospect of peace between Israel and Palestine, and for an end to the intifada.  I do wonder, however, how well it's going to work having an independent Palestinian nation that's in two completely disjoint parts separated by much of Israel.