Destroy all Malware

How to use WHOIS to track spammers

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 17:44:42 GMT

Very cool tutorial written by Matt Schneider. You don't want to spam this guy.

http://www.netdemon.net/tutorials/whois.txt

Another Pointless anti-Scoble Rant

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 15:03:34 GMT

Michael Greenly: Scoble went on a witch hunt today because some one was scrapping his blog content and re-using it. The problem is he's syndicating 100% of his content in his RSS feed. Which means he's all but signed a letter of permission for the public re-use of this content. Even worse in this particular case it was being re-used with attribution and a link back to his actual blog. Honestly for some one who blogs about technology he really is clueless about most of this stuff! Limit your RSS feeds to summaries.

http://metaspot.net/blog/articles/2006/08/27/another-pointless-scoble-rant

Randy: It's amazing how mis-informed the average Joe blogger is. Michael believes that by syndicating full-content you are giving permission to anybody to splog it. That's complete non-sense. It's Michael and not Scoble who is clueless here. I tried leaving comments on Michael's blog, but it seems his comment system is borked.

Scoble responds: And, I’m calling bull on this.

http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/08/27/blogger-says-its-ok-to-steal-if-they-use-rss/

Michael goes further: So after doing a little more looking I'm left even more confsued. Previously Scoble wrote here that the world was free to do with his content as it pleased.

AOL 0.9 is Malware?

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:59:23 GMT

Eric Bangeman: August has been a bad month for AOL. The month started with the company posting search histories for over 600,000 of its subscribers. AOL then pulled down the data, apologized, and sacked the people responsible. Now, the latest version of its Internet client software, AOL 9.0, has come under fire from StopBadware.org.

http://stopbadware.org/reports/reportdisplay?reportname=aol082706

Define: Porkbacks

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:23:50 GMT

Blake Handler, MS evangelist: we have spam trackbacks (I’ve affectionately named these “porkbacks” keeping with the swine theme).

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/alex_barnett_blog/~3/16793406/727036.aspx

Friendly spam

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:20:01 GMT

Today, I received the following email spam. No ad.

Subject: Spam from Vasya.

Hi my diar friend!
This is the spam message for you.
Vasya.

Google is Hotlinking Coolz0r

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 19:09:33 GMT

If you use a web based news aggregator like the Rmail/Gmail river of news mashup, then Coolz0r doesn't want you seeing his images. This wasn't his intent, but it's a casualty of trying to prevent people from stealing your bandwidth. If it's in your RSS feed, then it's likely being displayed by another domain. Another approach is to host your images on Flickr and Photobucket.

Andrew Blogiarizer Barrow

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:19:41 GMT

Mr. Andrew Barrow has decided to wear the hat of blogiarism. In a recent post, he blatantly copied content from Marjolein Hoekstra. Even worse, he failed to act when Marjolein confronted him. Is this guy pathetic or what?

http://www.cleverclogs.org/2006/08/open_letter_to_.html

Update: Andrew also blogiarizes for AOL's Weblogs Inc. Network's Slashfood blog. I've reviewed his recent entries on Slashfood and it appears he simply copies posts made by other bloggers, re-arranging the words slightly and never linking back to the source.

Can you spot the spam?

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 18:53:35 GMT

Hannah Rosenbaum: Are you spam savvy? Can you tell which Web sites will respect your personal information? Can you tell which ones might sell or rent your e-mail address to spammy third parties? Take our Spam Quiz to find out if you can spot a spammy Web site before your inbox suffers the consequences.

http://www.siteadvisor.com/spywarequiz

Randy: I got 7 of 8 and realized my mistake on the one I got wrong. It's not actually that hard. Most spam sites are badly designed with contrasting colors.

Statistics not Property of MLB

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 21:26:53 GMT

SI.com: Fantasy baseball leagues are allowed to use player names and statistics without licensing agreements because they are not the intellectual property of Major League Baseball, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/08/08/fantasy.baseball.lawsuit.ap/

Blog feeds may carry security risk

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:03:02 GMT

Joris Evers: Reading blogs via popular RSS or Atom feeds may expose computer users to hacker attacks, a security expert warns.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6102171.html?tag=nl.e589

Randy: OK, this seems a little naive. Javascript in RSS shouldn't create any more vulnerabilities than Javascript in HTML. Sounds like a lot of fear mongering. In particular, this security expert mentions Bloglines as a particularly vulnerable RSS reader. Since Bloglines runs in a browser, I cannot see how this present any more vulnerabilities than having visited the malicious website via a Web browser in the first place. In addition, the security expert says "some reader software on Windows systems uses Internet Explorer to display feed content, but doesn't use basic security settings that isolate the content". I'm not gonna pretend to be an IE security expert, but can anyone confirm that reading a feed via the Internet Explorer ActiveX control presents any more risk than reading the equivalent HTML in IE?

Thanks to Scott Kingery for the play tag with me link.

Http-equiv spam

Tue, 08 Aug 2006 16:34:18 GMT

I noticed an uptake in the amount of blog comment spam that contains HTML meta refresh commands. These commands would cause users visiting my blogs to be redirected to another webpage. The following webpage then has popups to try and force the user to download and install their anti-spyware software. I'm unsure if the offending website was involved in placing the links because they had an affiliate program and the links contained an affiliate ID.

Top-Selling Antivirus Programs Aren't the Best

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:48:10 GMT

Bruce Schneier: The top three antivirus programs -- from Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro -- are less likely to detect new viruses and worms than less popular programs, because virus writers specifically test their work against those programs.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/why_the_topsell.html

Virus writers target Windows Powershell

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 04:21:23 GMT

Tom Sanders: An Austrian group of virus writers has published new proof-of-concept malware code that targets Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Powershell technology.

http://www.pcw.co.uk/vnunet/news/2161396/virus-writers-target-upcoming