Destroy all Malware

I GOT SPAM

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 01:08:57 GMT

Guess What? I'm now blogging for Creative Weblogging on our new I GOT SPAM blog. Like this blog, the topic is malware. I likely won't be cross-posting much and spending more time on the new blog and very little time on this one. If your a regular, then you might want to subscribe over there too. You can get it via Rmail by clicking on the Rmail button below.

http://www.igotspam.com/ Rmail

Malware moves up, goes commercial

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:36:03 GMT

Peter Pollack: Engineers at Panda Software, while in the process of researching a new trojan, uncovered evidence this week that led them to a web site touting custom-built viruses for sale. For the low, low price of only US$990, a user gets his or her own pet trojan horse, complete with tech support. If the file is discovered—as this current model was—the designer provides a guarantee to alter it so that it may continue to avoid detection in the face of updated antivirus software.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060225-6264.html

Apple users may find worm

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 03:58:35 GMT

CNN: A malicious computer worm has been found that targets Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system, believed to be the first such virus aimed specifically at the Mac platform.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/17/technology/apple_virus.reut/

Randy: The virus quickly spread to all three Mac computers. Why would someone write a virus that attacks only 5% of computers?

Spyware King Wins Olympic Gold

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:57:41 GMT

Dale Begg-Smith of AdsCPM made his fortune from Spyware according to this article.

Read the entire article.

Advertisers face public humiliation over adware

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 19:42:24 GMT

Joris Evers: Companies could find themselves put up for public humiliation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission if they continue to advertise through insidious ad-serving software.

http://news.com.com/2100-7349_3-6037662.html

Randy: This is a great idea! Even if the FTC doesn't move forward, we can do this out in the open.

Google Copies Your Hard Drive

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 16:17:04 GMT

EFF: Google today announced a new "feature" of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new "Search Across Computers" feature will store copies of the user's Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google's own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user's computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who've obtained a user's Google password.

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_02.php

Randy: Google had to know this was coming. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! First thing, if you are an enterprise IT manager, then you should be blocking this feature at the firewall. Just imagine all the mundane users that are gonna install this at work and have all the company's private documents uploaded to Google's server.

Email Sucks

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:13:15 GMT

I'm now pretty much doing email by the seat of my pants. If you sent me an email in the last 24 hours, then I likely didn't read it. It all started about 17 hours ago, when I started receiving the same SPAM email over-and-over. No matter how many times I marked the email as SPAM, Gmail continued to drop the email in my Inbox. I reviewed the email's original content and each email is identical except the sending and receiving email addresses. What's new? Gmail SPAM filtering sucks and is getting worse.

I created a filter to automatically move the missed SPAM into the Trash folder. Then I went to sleep. ... I wake up in the morning and for the first time in years, I have no email in my Inbox. Nothing for 14 hours. It seems that Gmail is no longer accepting any of my email. Period. I even sent an email directly to my Gmail account and it hasn't arrived. No email in the Trash or SPAM bucket in 16 hours.

I switched my Inbox over to Yahoo! mail. Yahoo! mails interface sucks and I haven't got my invite to the beta. I also tried Hotmail and live.com, which suck even more.

Update: Just wanted to point out the Yahoo! mail SPAM filter sucks too! Maybe I have to write my own Webmail client.

Today is Internet Safe Day in EU

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:35:48 GMT

PR: Safer Internet Day will take place on 7 February 2006.

http://www.saferinternet.org/ww/en/pub/insafe/news/insafe20060118.htm

AOL, Yahoo Plan Paid E-Mail Service

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:02:03 GMT

Antone Gonsalves: America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. on Monday said they planned to launch certified email services that would bypass spam filters and deliver messages directly to subscribers.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=179100768

Kamasutra Worm-Virus

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 12:54:15 GMT

TechTree: Sex sells and the new internet worm (Nyxem-E) nick-named the "Kama Sutra worm" because it spreads under the guise of pornographic content, has leap-frogged lesser viruses reaching top-spot on world virus charts.

Ringo is Malware

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:05:55 GMT

Last week, I had the forturne of one of my x-cow-orkers joining the malware photo sharing Website called Ringo. While trying to get this persons photos, Ringo asked me for my MSN username and password. WTF? Now, I know how I got spammed, I'm an MSN friend of this x-cow-orker. Import your MSN list and SPAM them all. Well, I'm not that stupid. I entered false credentials, never got further and exited the session. Too late, now I'm getting regular SPAM email from Ringo.

http://www.ringo.com/

Thanks you FeedBurner!

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:41:55 GMT

Just a thanks to the FeedBurner team. I reported a splog earlier this month that was hosted on Blogspot and had a FeedBurner feed. The FeedBurner team sent the author an email and the author deleted both the blog and feed.

Splogger Challenge II

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:32:09 GMT

Let's move forward with Splogger Challenge II. This guy is stealing content, excerpting some, but not providing a link back. Then he monetizes by splashing AdSense. The excerpted articles without the link back are completely incomprehensible.

http://seo-news-articles.b-1st.com/ << NOFOLLOW

Please click on his AdSense where it says "Ads by Google", the click "Send Google your thoughts on the ads you just saw" and tell Google to cut off his AdSense because he's splogging.

Creative Comment SPAM

Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:47:10 GMT

I'm getting some awefully creative comment SPAM. It would seem they are writing on topic, even quoting other blogs and bloggers, but adding hidden links via <SCRIPT>, <NOSCRIPT> and other HTML. Of course, I e-mail myself the HTML of every comment, so I can see those things and add them to my kill file. I'm certain this is working on most blogs, where the authors are not technical enough to see what's really up.