US airmen hornswoggled by Transformers email trick

A US Air Force security training exercise which created a false buzz about the filming of Transformers 3 succeeded in creating awareness of phishing issues, but went a little further than was expected. Bogus emails sent to airmen at the Anderson Airforce Base suggested Transformers 3 was about to shoot on Guam and made …

[Robert McCracken]

Or...

Meet Megan, then blow stuff up loudly.. or have Megan blow stuff [cough] up loudly.. either way a fun day out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad the USAF is web surfing when they should be working

Fine them!!!! And demote them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprised?

Er - they work for the US military. Why on earth would you expect them to have a brain they can use for themselves?

[Bill Neal]

not impressive

its a shame lower ranks of the chair force haven't much better to do than twitter eachother etc.

[Wheaty73]

Interesting locations

Based on the disaster that was the first 2 movies, I imagine the locations will actually be "hollywood Russia" and "hollywood China" - where you can travel from Guilin in the south to the Great Wall and back to Shanghai in under a day. Or where underneath the Oriental Pearl you have all these little hutongs from Beijing to fight amongst because they look Chinese (unlike Shanghai). Can't wait for the Chinese to see that and complain that we are dissing them again.

Also, fantastic way to highlight phishing. Thumbs up for the USAAF. (Icon for Michael Bay, just because)

[Sekundra]

Fair Play

Imaginative, effective, and even when it got out of hand no real damage done.

[Anonymous Coward]

word of the day: "Hornswoggled"

Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

As it is the nearest we have to "Tit-head" (cos thats what they are!!

HA-ha

[Stevie]

Bah!

Yes, the danger of pranks like this backfiring due to over-credulous loons is always present.

I remember once when as a university student I helped start a rumour that there was a surplus of fresh baked bread in Czechoslovakia. The Russian newspapers got hold of the story, things got out of hand in an eyeblink and it ended up in the invasion of Prague by Soviet armoured units.

I certainly learned my lesson, I can tell you.

[Craig 28]

Re:Surprised?

Oh I'm sure a lot of them have brains, they're just heavily trained not to use them. Imagine being given 50 push ups or whatever the military does every time you show any sign of individuality. Not to mention the risk of having to clean the latrines...

[Winkypop]

It took $800m??

Just shows you CAN polish a turd after all.

[elderlybloke]

I never got Hornswoggled

when I spent my CMT time in the NZ Air Force.

To smart for that, and maybe because the Internet didn't exist back then.

[Dylan Fahey]

Phishing Megan Fox?

Phishing Megan Fox? That sounds like the best Air Force exercise that I've ever been in.

Paris, because we wish Megan made home vids too!

[Robert Carnegie]

I've just been re-reading Terry Pratchett's [Making Money]

"All the way to Genua there were people who'd been duped, fooled, swindled, and cheated by that face. The only thing he hadn't done was hornswoggle, and that was only because he hadn't found out how to."

Actually it just means to cheat. One of the databases driving dictionary.reference.com places it in a family of artificially long words from non-East Coast U.S., another being "skedaddle". One wonders whether, like Edison and the verb "to Westinghouse" (his electrical competitor, the intended meaning "to electrocute", which is the one that we ended up with) - or like Shakespeare - a dictionary maker was inventing words and then trying to have them catch on with the public.

[Sam Therapy]

All of which goes to show...

The number of idiots out there is double the amount anyone thought. At least.

No wonder the Nigerian scams still work.