_ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ | | | |_ _| | \ | | _____ _____| | ___| |_| |_ ___ _ __ | |_| || | | \| |/ _ \ \ /\ / / __| |/ _ \ __| __/ _ \ '__| | _ || | | |\ | __/\ V V /\__ \ | __/ |_| || __/ | |_| |_|___| |_| \_|\___| \_/\_/ |___/_|\___|\__|\__\___|_| --------------------------------------------Issue 12- HYIP NEWSLETTER - stay up to date in the hyip world! http://www.hyipinvestment.com http://www.hyipdiscussion.com ----------------------------------------------------- DISCLAIMER: All information in the HI Newsletter is neither an endorsement nor a solicitation of any sort and cannot be considered as a promotional offering. We do not provide free professional consulting on investment options or personal assistance with recovery of deposited funds. ----------------------------------------------------- Complete archives of the HI Newsletter are now available at the following URL: http://www.hyipinvestment.com/newsletterarchive.php ----------------------------------------------------- in this issue: 1. News on most popular programs 2. DDOS Attacks. What Are They? 3. Program Snapshot: Invex Advertisement: ----------------------------------------------------- XXXXX ----------------------------------------------------- News on most popular programs PIPS (People In Profit System): The PIPS subsection on the HYIPDiscussion.com forum can be locked soon for new messages until further notice in order to prevent cases of senseless arguments and personal attacks among the forum members. An important announcement in reference to the company's restructuring is expected to be made by Bryan Marsden, the CEO of PIPS, in the near future. Global Mutual: Global Mutual is currently working on the setup of the company's own financial establishments (such as GM Exchange and GM Credit Union), which will be supported by MarsterCard Cash and Debit Card services. Withdrwal requests are being processed smoothly, with no delays. Major innovations within GM's corporate structure are to be announced soon. StudioTraffic: To handle the increasing growth, ST has opened another office in US, making 2 offices in this country. Together with the offices in Canada, Spain, The Netherlands and Malaysia, the company will be able to cope with its rapid international development. StudioPay aims to have offices worldwide. The company's offices in Singapore, India and UK will be ready soon, with the staff capacity to be doubled by next month. Reality Millions: In the process of transferring to the new system, a "sneak preview" has become available to the program's existing members only. New signups will remain disabled until the system's upgrade is completed. You can discuss these and many other programs with fellow high-yield investors on our forum at http://www.hyipdiscussion.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- DDOS Attacks: What Are They? (in co-operation with http://hyip-navigator.com E-magazine) Quite often online high-yield investment programs use DDOS attacks as a seemingly legitimate excuse for closing their websites and terminating interest payouts to their members. In most cases, this is done in order to avoid responsibility for losing the funds of their investors. Nevertheless, sometimes DDOS attacks indeed take place and can cause major harm to the admins of investment programs and owners of commercial websites. By its nature, a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services by consuming the bandwidth of the victim network or overloading the computational resources of the victim system. In many cases, the attacker will place client software on a number of unsuspecting remote computers and then use these computers to launch the attack. A Distributed Denial of Service attack is more effective than a simple Denial of Service attack, as the volume of traffic is considerably higher, and is more difficult to prevent. Examples of DDOS attacks are Syn flood, Smurf attack and Targa attack. In a distributed attack, the attacking computer hosts are often personal computers with broadband connections to the Internet that have been compromised by viruses or Trojan horse programs that allow the perpetrator to remotely control the machine and direct the attack, often through a botnet. With enough such slave hosts, the services of even the largest and most well-connected websites can be denied. The recent major DDOS attack on the HI Network can serve as a bright example of this form of access denial. In the HYIP industry, DDOS attacks are particularly harmful to those investment programs which are no more than mere pyramid schemes (also known as "ponzies") and heavily rely on the influx of new funds, since all interest payouts to early investors are made from the deposits of new members. Once a "ponzi" scheme website is under a DDOS attack, new funds can no longer be deposited due to the members being unable to access the program's website. Hence, time becomes the main enemy of the program in this case: if the admins fail to recover from a DDOS attack in a prompt manner, the pyramid scheme quickly reaches its peak and collapses, with all investors suffering losses. There are a few steps that can be taken to mitigate the effects of a DDOS attack. One of such steps is to start is the investigative process. One determines which core router (a router that handles Internet backbone traffic) is passing the packets to one's border router (a router that connects his or her network to the Internet). One would contact the owners of the core router, likely a telecom company or the internet service provider, and inform them of his or her problem. Ideally, there will be a process in place which can expedite one's requests for help. They, in turn, need to determine where the malicious traffic reaches their network and contact the source. By that point, it is out of one's hands. Since it is not likely that the administrator will be able to quickly stop the DDOS flood, there are a few steps which might help mitigate the attack temporarily. If the target is a single machine, a simple IP address change can end the flood. The new address can be updated on internal DNS servers and given to a few crucial external users. This is especially useful for key servers (e.g. email or database) under attack on one's network. There is a chance that some filtering techniques can help. If the attack is unsophisticated, there might be a specific signature to the traffic. A careful examination of captured packets sometimes reveals a trait on which you can base either router ACLs (access control lists) or firewall rules. Additionally, a large amount of traffic may originate from a specific provider or core router. If that is the case, one might consider temporarily blocking all traffic from that source, which should allow a portion of legitimate activity through. One would also be blocking "real" packets, or legitimate traffic, but this may be an unavoidable sacrifice. However, depending on the method of attack, this option may be unavailable to you if, for example, the participants' IP addresses are spoofed. A final option, one which might be available to larger companies and networks, is to throw more hardware or bandwidth at the flood and wait it out. Again, it is not the best solution, nor the least expensive one. It may provide a temporary fix, nevertheless. The investigative process should begin immediately after a DDOS attack begins. There will be multiple phone calls, call backs, emails, pages and faxes between the victim organization, one's provider and others involved. It is a time consuming process, so the process should begin immediately. It has taken some very large networks with plenty of resources several hours to halt a DDOS. One more thing to be mentioned here: most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) strictly prohibit the launch of DDOS attacks by their clients, since this activity involves the violation of property rights which is considered to be a serious crime in all countries, with high levels of liability being applicable. Despite the investigative process being fairly lengthy, in the vast majority of cases it is very effective (since it is quite easy for an ISP to trace down one of its clients) and may result in a legal prosecution, leading to an immediate imprisonment of the criminals. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Program Snapshot: Invex -Program Information Invex Ltd. (www.invex.org) is an online subdivision of Panama-based "Lomax Group Corp.". The program itself acquires its own offshore registration in the Cayman Islands. The online program exists since late 2004 and claims to have registered offices in a few places, including Geneva where its staff is based, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Hong-Kong, Philadelphia (PA) and New-York, Caracas, Budapest, Tunis, etc. Members' funds are allegedly invested in a variety of high-yield ventures, quite often in one-time opportunities on a case by case basis. In addition, the program has parts in a big online casino network, in a large hosting network too, altogether with investing in oil, real estate, and more generally in all domains that can generate high profit, even only one time. -Business Concept The company offers several investment plans, including the Platinum plan, the Titanium plan, and the 2006 Bond plan. The last two options are relatively new: the Titanium plan (minimum $50,000) has been launched in May/June, 2005 and the "2006 Bond" plan is the program's newest product. The Titanium plan is a very personal plan for each Investor, according to the amount he wants to invest, and the date of the investment. It is on 3 or 6 months, with the capital locked, and with a written guarantee by the LGC, the program's upstream holding. The company's Staff meets with those Investors who are willing to invest in a Titanium plan (generally in Geneva, Switzerland) to sign an agreement, so they have all the guarantees that in case Invex Ltd. cannot pay the interest OR the principal back, the Lomax Group Corp. will pay the principal back. As for the "2006 Bond" plan, it holds the status of a special deal: Bonds that will be paid on January, 2006. Currently, they can be purchased for $1,000 (before the end of July), and will be valued at $35,000 on January 2. The high return rate is explained by a major oil operation in Central Asia, which involves a few Governments. Large companies and banks are allegedly involved in this operation, and the Invex Ltd. signed agreements to offer these bonds. The company has also signed non-disclosure agreements, so it will not disclose any information about the emitters of these bonds, which banks/governments are involved etc. -Payment Options The company accepts the following methods of payment: E-gold (any amounts), E-bullion (staring at $100 USD), and bank wire transfers (starting at $50,000 USD or less). Members are allowed to cancel their deposits - in this case, the principal is returned, with a 20% fee being deducted from the total amount. In addition, the program offers a 2% referral commission for every new investor introduced to the program. -Website and Customer Support The company has hired a professional web-designer to maintain its website in a fully operational mode. Invex Ltd. has offices in a few places, with a prompt fax and live support being offered. E-mail remains to be the most effective way of contacting the program's support team. In certain cases, members a provided with a telephone number at which one of the company's representatives can be reached. -Our Opinion For the six months of its online operation, Invex Ltd. has gained the reputation of a responsible investment program. With a few thousands of investors and over two million dollars of deposited funds, the company hasn't missed a single payout for the entire period of being in business. The company declares its plans on offering new financial products and instruments in the future - hence, its further growth and advancement can be expected soon. However, the program's 2006 Bond plan appears "too good to be true", and prospective investments should keep in mind that successful past performance is never a guarantee of successful future performance. ----------------------------------------------- If you are an admin of an investment program and would like it to be reviewed in our newsletter, feel free to contact us by e-mail at bravehoststamps@yahoo.com ----------------------------------------------- Bravehoststamps (bravehoststamps@yahoo.com) HI Newsletter