Chicago, Illinois

Commanders report to the superintendent of police who in turn is subject to the authority of the mayor of Chicago. March 2005 also saw Microsoft partner with the Australian government to teach law enforcement officials how to combat various cyber crimes, including phishing.^[20]. Each commander oversees a network of administrative and operational departments that include patrol officers, detective forces, and other investigative units. Microsoft hope to use these lawsuits to uncover some of the largest phishing operators. There are twenty-five police districts, each led by a commander. The lawsuits accuse "John Doe" defendants of using various methods to obtain passwords and confidential information. By comparison, Los Angeles, the nation's second largest city, has just over 9,000 sworn officers covering 469 square miles. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

It is the largest police department in the Midwest and the second largest in the nation (with 13,619 sworn officers and 2,625 other employees covering 234 square miles as of 2003), and one of the oldest organized police forces in the world. On March 31, 2005, Microsoft filed 117 federal lawsuits in the U.S. The Chicago Police Department, also known as the CPD, is the principal law enforcement agency of Chicago, under the jurisdiction of the mayor. Microsoft has also joined the effort to crack down on phishing. Congress, most elections are won by Democrats, such as the landslide win of Barack Obama in 2004. The federal anti-phishing bill proposes that those criminals who create fake web sites and spam bogus emails in order to defraud consumers could receive a fine up to $250,000 and receive jail terms of up to five years.^[19]. In partisan elections, such as for the State Legislature and U.S. In the United States, Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 on March 1, 2005.

The issue was controversial especially in Illinois, since the state is arguably the most varied in terms of liberal urban areas vs conservative rural areas. UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role in a phishing scam ^[17], in a case connected to the USSS Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious "carder" websites ^[18]. Daley rejected a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage in the city. Likewise, authorities later arrested a phishing kingpin, Valdir Paulo de Almeida, for leading one of the largest phishing crime rings, which in 2 years stole between $18 and $37 million USD ^[16]. In 2004, Mayor Richard M. In late March 2005, a 24-year-old Estonian man was arrested for using a backdoor, installed after victims visited his fake website, which included a keylogger that allowed him to monitor users' typing ^[15]. Social liberalism is strong in the city, with a strong majority of Chicagoans supporting welfare programs and the pro-choice movement. by tracing and arresting phishers.

Chicago's politics lean famously to the left compared to the rest of the Midwest, and it is often said that Chicago is the "East Coast" of the Midwest. Europe and Brazil have both followed the lead of the U.S. Today, only one alderman is Republican. The defendant, a Californian teenager, allegedly created and used a webpage designed to look like the America Online website, so that he could steal credit card numbers^[14]. For example, the citizens of Chicago have not elected a Republican mayor since 1927, when William Thompson was voted into office. On January 26, 2004, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) filed the first lawsuit against a suspected phisher. For much of the last century, Chicago has been considered one of the largest Democratic strongholds in the United States. The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry and law enforcement association, has suggested that conventional phishing techniques could become obsolete in the future as people are increasingly aware of the social engineering techniques used by phishers.^[13] They propose that pharming and other uses of malware will become more common tools for stealing information.

Another point of interest is the party leanings of the city. Several companies offer banks and other entities likely to suffer from phishing scams 24/7 services of monitoring, analyzing and taking down phishing websites by legal means. Daley once led a political machine called the Chicago Democratic Machine. This (and other forms of two-way authentication and two-factor authentication) are still susceptible to attack, such as that suffered by Scandinavian bank Nordea in late 2005^[12]. Former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Sites have also added verification tools that allow users to see a secret image that the user selected in advance; if the image does not appear, then the site is not legitimate^[11]. The council takes official action through the passage of ordinances and resolutions. Many organizations have introduced a feature called challenge questions, which ask the user for information that should be known only to the user and the bank.

Government priorities and activities are established in a budget ordinance usually adopted each November. Spam filters also help protect users from phishers, because they reduce the number of phishing-related emails that users receive. The council enacts local ordinances and approves the city budget. The programs work by identifying phishing contents on websites and emails; anti-phishing software may be integrated with web browsers and email clients as a toolbar that displays the real domain name for the visiting website. The City Council is the legislative branch and is made up of 50 aldermen, one elected from each ward in the city. Several anti-phishing software programs are available. In addition to the mayor, Chicago's two other citywide elected officials are the clerk and the treasurer. Many companies, including eBay and PayPal, always address their customers by their username in emails, so if an email addresses a user in a generic fashion ("Dear valued eBay member") it is likely to be an attempt at phishing.

Daley, a Democrat. A user who is contacted about an account needing to be "verified" could either contact the company that is the subject of the email, or could type in a trusted web address for the company's website into the address bar of their browser, to bypass the link in the suspected phishing message. The current mayor is Richard M. In a June 2004 experiment with spear phishing, 80% of 500 West Point cadets who were sent a fake email were tricked into revealing personal information.^[10]. The mayor appoints commissioners and other officials who oversee the various departments. One newer phishing tactic, which uses phishing emails targeted at a specific company, known as spear phishing, has been harnessed to train users at various locations, including West Point Military Academy. The mayor is the chief executive, elected by general election for a term of four years. One strategy for combating phishing is to train users how to deal with phishing attempts.

The government of the City of Chicago is divided into executive and legislative branches. There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including legislation and technology created specifically to target phishing. Chicago is the largest city and the county seat of Cook County. In March 2005, the amount of money lost in the UK was approximately £12 million GBP.^[9]. An earthquake of 6 or higher in the Missouri Fault might cause moderate to high damage in Chicago. businesses lose an estimated $2 billion USD a year as their clients become victims.^[8] The United Kingdom also suffers from the immense increase in phishing. This earthquake sparked worries that the New Madrid fault might become active again. U.S.

More recently, an earthquake with an epicenter in Ottawa, Illinois registering about 4.3 on the Richter scale shook some buildings in Chicago on June 28, 2004. It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, approximately 1.2 million computer users in the United States suffered losses caused by phishing, totaling approximately $929 million USD. Since the first recorded earthquake in 1804 [2], Chicago has occasionally experienced earthquakes. Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person's details to create fake accounts in a victim's name, ruin a victim's credit, or even prevent victims from accessing their own accounts. There's even a nickname for the city's legendary gusts: "The Hawk." Lou Rawls brought The Hawk to national attention it in his song Dead End Street:
. This style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the ease with which unsuspecting people often divulge personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers and social security numbers. Whether Chicago is actually windier than other cities is in dispute, but the wind nevertheless has a strong hold on popular imagination. The damage caused by phishing ranges from loss of access to email to substantial financial loss.

Although rare, the temperature can climb to 50 °F (10 °C) or higher in winter. Despite the publicity surrounding the flaw, known as IDN spoofing^[6] or a homograph attack^[7], no known phishing attacks have yet taken advantage of it. This frigid weather doesn't normally last more than 1-3 days at a time. A further problem with URLs has been found in the handling of Internationalized domain names (IDN) in web browsers, that might allow visually identical web addresses to lead to different, possibly malicious, websites. Temperatures can sometimes drop below 0 °F (-18 °C) overnight and then rise by the next morning. In this attack method (known as Cross Site Scripting) users may receive a message saying that they have to "verify" their account, by following a link to what appears to be an authentic website; in reality, the link is crafted to carry out this attack, although it is very difficult to spot without specialist knowledge. Temperatures and snowfall can vary widely in the span of one to two weeks, and extended periods of temperatures below 32 °F (0 °C) are not uncommon in January and February. These types of attacks are particularly problematic, because they direct the user to sign in at their bank or service's own web pages, where everything from the web address to the security certificates appears correct.

Winter in Chicago is a variable and fickle season. In another popular method of phishing, an attacker uses a bank or service's own scripts against the victim. The highest temperature ever reached in Chicago was 104 °F. This is done either by placing a picture of the legitimate entity's URL over the address bar, or by closing the original address bar and opening a new one containing the legitimate URL. Summer is the rainiest season, with short-lived rainfall and thunderstorms more common than prolonged rainy periods[1]. Some phishing scams use javascript commands in order to obfuscate the address bar. Chicago's yearly precipitation averages about 36 inches (914 mm). This method has since been closed off in the Mozilla^[4] and Internet Explorer^[5] web browsers, while Opera provides a warning message and the option not to follow the link.

Summers have been known to bring different elements in a one day period; ranging from bright sunny mornings, to partly-cloudy and rainy early afternoons, to bright sunny late afternoons, to comfortable evenings. For example, the link http://www.google.com@members.tripod.com/ may deceive a casual observer into believing that the link will open a page on www.google.com, whereas the link actually directs the browser to a page on members.tripod.com, using a username of www.google.com; were there no such user, the page would open normally. Weather typical of each season can sometimes arrive unusually early or late, for example, the highest recorded temperature in March was 84 °F and the lowest in September was 37 °F. One other method of spoofing links used web addresses containing the @ symbol, which were used to include a username and password in a web URL (contrary to the standard^[3]). Average high and low temperatures for July are 84 °F/63 °F, and for January it is 29 °F/13 °F. Misspelled URLs or the use of subdomains are common tricks used by phishers, such as this example URL, http://www.yourbank.com.example.com/. Lake Michigan can have a moderating effect for neighborhoods close to the shoreline, keeping them cooler in summer and slightly warmer in winter; but also producing a 'lake effect' of snowfall in winter. Most methods of phishing use some form of technical deception designed to make a link in an email appear to belong to the spoofed organization.

Midwest, with hot summers and cold winters, subject to possible extremes in both seasons. In this second example, targeted at SouthTrust Bank users, the phisher has used an image to make it harder for anti-phishing scanners to detect by scanning for text commonly used in phishing emails. Chicago has a continental climate typical of the U.S. In an example PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the email ("no choise but to temporaly suspend your account"), and the presence of an IP address in the link visible in the tooltip under the yellow box ("Click here to verify your account") are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. While winters can often be bitterly cold, extreme summer heat waves are not uncommon. In general such targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing. Chicago is known as a city of climate extremes. While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the hope of finding a customer of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to establish what bank a potential victim has a relationship with, and then send an appropriate spoofed email to this victim^[2].

The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connects the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River, which runs to the west of the city. More recent phishing attempts have started to target the customers of banks and online payment services. The city lies beside Lake Michigan and two rivers, the Chicago in downtown and the Calumet in the industrial far South Side, entirely or partially flow through Chicago. The shutting down of the warez scene on AOL caused most phishers to leave the service, and many phishers — often young teens in their heyday — grew out of the habit. The city has been built on relatively flat land; the average height of land is 579 feet (176 meters) above sea level. Phishers temporarily moved to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), since they could not be banned from the AIM server. The total area is 2.94% water. AOL simultaneously developed a system to quickly deactivate any account involved in phishing, often before their phishes (a term for the victims of a "phish") could respond.

Census Bureau, Chicago has a total area of 606.1 km² (234.0 mi²), of which 588.3 km² (227.1 mi²) is land and 17.8 km² (6.9 mi²) is water. Around the same time phishing was so prevalent on AOL that they added a line on all instant messages stating, "no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information". According to the U.S. In 1997, AOL's policy enforcement with respect to phishing and warez became stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. When Chicago was founded in the 1830s most of the early building began around the mouth of the Chicago River. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally required custom-written programs, such as the colorfully named AOHell. Chicago is located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan. Once the victim had submitted his or her password, the attacker could then access the victim's account and use it for various criminal purposes, such as spamming.

Daley, became mayor in 1989. In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include text such as "verify your account" or "confirm billing information". Daley, son of Richard J. A cracker might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking the victim to reveal his or her password^[1]. Richard M. Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. AOL eventually brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent this, so early AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate AOL accounts.

During Daley's tenure (he died in office in 1976), the 1968 Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago, four major expressways were built, the Sears Tower became the world's tallest building and O'Hare Airport (which later became the world's busiest airport) was constructed. Those who would later phish on AOL during the 1990s originally created accounts on AOL with fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers — these accounts could last weeks or even months until new ones were required. Daley was elected in 1955, in the era of so-called machine politics. The term phishing was coined by crackers attempting to "fish" for accounts from unsuspecting AOL members; ph is a common hacker replacement for f, and is a nod to an older form of hacking known as "phone phreaking.". Mayor Richard J. The first recorded mention of phishing is on the alt.2600 hacker newsgroup in January 1996, although the term may have appeared even earlier in the printed edition of the hacker newsletter "2600 Magazine". On December 2, 1942, the world's first controlled nuclear reaction was conducted at the University of Chicago as part of the top secret Manhattan Project. .

In 1900 this problem was solved by reversing the direction of the River's flow with the construction of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal leading to the Illinois River. Attempts include legislation, user training, and technical measures. The cribs failed to bring enough clean water because spring rains would wash the polluted water from the Chicago River into them. With the growing number of reported phishing incidents, additional methods of protection are needed. The water cribs were two miles (three kilometers) off the shore of Lake Michigan. The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to "fish" for users' financial information and passwords. The city embarked on a large tunnel excavation project and began building tunnels below Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In computing, phishing is a form of social engineering, characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message.

Lake Michigan — the primary source of fresh water for the city — was already highly polluted from the rapidly growing industries in and around Chicago, a new way of procuring clean water was needed. The first skyscraper in the world was constructed in 1885 using novel steel skeleton construction. In the following years, Chicago architecture would become influential throughout the world. Due to the fire much of the city needed to be rebuilt; this gave city planners a clean slate to fix the problems of the past.

By this time the city had a population of over 300,000. In 1871, most of the city burned in the Great Chicago Fire. president, and was the first of twenty-five in the city. The 1860 Republican National Convention in Chicago nominated home-state candidate Abraham Lincoln for U.S.

Chicago grew to 1.1 million people in less than sixty years. By 1890, Chicago was the second largest city in the United States, after New York City. These problems were rectified by several large public works projects. The geography of Chicago presented early citizens with many problems, including transportation and sewage.

These projects foreshadowed Chicago's eventual development into the transportation hub of the United States. The first rail line to Chicago, the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, was completed the same year. The opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1848 allowed shipping from the Great Lakes through Chicago to the Mississippi River. The city was the logical transportation link between eastern and western United States, using the Great Lakes and the river systems, and (after 1850) the railroads.

Many factors contributed to that growth but early on the most important aspects could be attributed to Chicago's geographic proximity in a expanding nation. Thus began the next step in what would become massive early growth. Chicago incorporated on March 4, 1837 when the State of Illinois granted Chicago a city charter. Within seven years a flood of new arrivals from New England and other points east gave the town a population of over 4,000.

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago organized with a population of 350. Army built Fort Dearborn; in 1812 it was destroyed in the Fort Dearborn Massacre . In 1803, the U.S. The first non-native settler in Chicago was Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable, a Haitian of African descent, who arrived in the 1770s, and whose heritage was much talked about after 1950.

During the mid-1700s, the Chicago area was inhabited primarily by Potawatomis, who took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox. . Chicago also has several dozen distinct neighborhoods to match the ethnic diversity; the city is divided into 77 official community areas. About one-third of central-city Chicagoans are Caucasian, another third African American, around a quarter Hispanic and one-tenth Asian, with small amounts of other races filling in the remainder.

There is some ambiguity regarding the suburbs - some residents call themselves "Chicagoans" and identify with the central city, while others rarely deal with or visit the central city. A resident of Chicago is referred to as a Chicagoan. A variety of colloquial nicknames reflect Chicago's unique character. Chicago's skyscrapers, local cuisine, political traditions, and sports teams are some of the most recognized symbols of the city.

The city has long been known around the world as a financial, industrial, and transportation center and for its ethnic diversity. Chicago also leads the country in the number of conventions held in the city annually. Chicago was the site of the world's first skyscraper, and today is the financial, transportation, and cultural capital of the Midwest. Growing from a frontier town of the Old Northwest in 1833 to one of the world's premier cities, Chicago is ranked as one of 10 "Alpha" (most influential) world cities by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group & Network.

When combined with its suburbs and nine surrounding counties in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana, the greater metropolitan area known as Chicagoland encompasses a population of nearly 10 million people. Chicago is located in the Midwestern state of Illinois along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago, known as the "Second City" and the "Windy City", is the third-largest city in population in the United States, following New York City and Los Angeles.
Location in Chicagoland.