Elamb Cybersecurity

Category: Kill Spammers

  • Spyware Can Constitute illegal Trespass On Home Computers

    In the case of Sotelo v. DirectRevenue, the plantiff filed a complaint against various defendants claiming that they download and/or installed software on his computer without his consent.  I bet the creators of DirectRevenue did see THIS is their risk analysis.. getting sued by potential costumers.

    This seems to be a growing trend.  Just look at Mr. Braver, he won $10 Million dollars.  And it this tort happy world I suspect there will me much more.  Lawsuits seem to be like the new lottery.  Some people even do it for a living or a health plan.  Don't get me wrong, I want to kill spam at the roots, I'm just wondering how far lawsuits will take us in the right direction.  Unlike the RIAA, I don't think that lawsuit are the answer to life, the universe and every thing.  Hopefully,

    A federal trial court in Chicago has ruled recently that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (meaning trespass to personal property) applies to the interference caused to home computers by spyware.

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  • Four Ways To Eliminate Spam

    Written by Gary Gresham

    The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was supposed to eliminate spam email. This
    federal spam law that became effective January 1, 2004, was passed by
    Congress to get rid of junk email.

    So why didn't the law
    eliminate spam and why is it so difficult to stop it? Still today, more
    than 40% of all e-mail is still unsolicited sent to you by spammers
    even though that law passed.

    The truth is email spammers make so
    much money they can afford to outsmart The Federal Trade Commission
    with sophisticated technology.

    It is almost impossible to enforce this law although a few do get caught and pay the huge price.

    Spam
    is not likely to go away anytime soon, and it's difficult to eliminate
    spam email altogether. But there are some simple ways to significantly
    reduce spam from getting into your inbox.

    Here are Four Fighting Spam Tips:

    Protect Your Email Address

    Don't
    display your email address in newsgroup postings, chat rooms or in an
    online service's membership directory. Sometimes email spammers use
    these sources to harvest email addresses.

    Create Two Email Addresses

    Another
    good tip is create two email addresses. Create one for personal
    messages and the other for public use, such as in newsgroups or chat
    rooms.

    You can create an account with a disposable email address
    service. Have those emails forwarded to your permanent email address.
    If the disposable address begins to get spam, just shut if off and get
    another one.

    Create A Unique Email Address

    Create a
    unique email address because email spammers often use dictionary
    attacks to sort through possible name combinations at some Internet
    Service Providers. A common name, like johnsmith or thewilliams may get
    more spam than a unique name like 37xi6OWt8.

    Use Email Tools

    Most
    email accounts provide tools to filter out potential spam or ways to
    channel spam into a bulk email folder. When you're choosing which
    Internet Service Provider to use consider their email options.

    Although
    these simple methods might seem obvious, most people do not utilize
    them. You may be surprised how much junk email you can get rid of just
    by using these simple tips.

    If you decide to eliminate spam
    altogether all it takes is installing an anti spam filter. Most are
    reasonably priced between $25 and $40 depending on where you get it. A
    good anti spam filter will block 100% of unwanted spam and will
    eliminate spam forever.

    Copyright © 2005 Spyware Information.com All Rights Reserved.

    This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com
    where you will find free spyware cleaners, downloads, removal software,
    computer firewalls and valuable tips. For regularly updated articles
    about adware, spyware and protection from identity theft go to http://spyware-information.com/articles_1.html

  • My Honeypot server: Message from system to alert spam

    I plugged an unpatched Windows 2000 system on the Internet with no
    firewall, antivirus or even pop up blockers to sniff out the raw filth
    being pumped to the world. 

    What I was immediately spammed with was “Message from System to Alert messages” from various “security software” sites.   Here are the results:

    “Message from System to Alert” Pop ups

    These messages claimed to be from Microsoft or from my system or from
    System32 saying my registry was corrupt and a bunch of other lies.

  • Disposable e-mail address roundup: mailiminator and others

    Here's a pretty nice roundup of some of the services available to create throwaway e-mail addresses to keep your inbox free from spam.

    There is a spam coutner-culture growing fast on the web.  With sites like mailiminator agressive on the front lines against spam I feel pretty good about the future.

    Here is how mailiminator works:  Say you see a really interesting $100K per day offer on the Internet! Surely, you can't pass it up.. this could be your big break.  The site even says so. The site wants you to simpply submit your email and the cash will come rolling in.   But your not sure because the last site you submited your email to offered $200K per day and as soon as you entered you email address you recieved 300K emails per day. 

    So instead of entering your address you just make up some junk mailiminator account and have all the traffic sent there instead.

    That is a good idea and here are many more antispam tools for you: 

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  • Spyware Stats To Pay Attention To

    In early 2005 Webroot Software released its State of Spyware Report which was conducted by Webroot and Earthlink. In the survey over 4.6 million computer systems were scanned during 2004 and the results have shown how threatening spyware has become.

    It was suggested that more than 90 percent of all computers with internet connections are infected with spyware. During the first quarter of 2005 approximately 88 percent of systems scanned with Webroot’s SpyAudit software had some sort of unwanted application detected.

    On corporate computers over 55 percent of PCs had unwanted programs, excluding cookies because they are thought not to be as intrusive or detrimental. The corporate computers averaged 7.2 non-cookie spyware infections per computer.

    In 2004 the last quarter yielded 19 percent of consumer and business computers with keyloggers and in the first quarter of 2005 that number had dropped to 7 percent, according to systems scanned with Webroot’s software. In both the last quarter of 2004 and first quarter of 2005 19 percent of consumer PCs and 7 percent of business PCs had Trojans.

    Another daunting piece of information gather through online research by Phileas is that 4,294 sites were found to have some type of spyware. This information has proven that in a short amount of time spyware has skyrocketed into the top internet threat. As the internet become a rapidly growing medium used by millions online threats such as spyware can thrive and spread a quick rate, infecting and damaging nearly all user unless protective measures are taken.

    Mitch Johnson is a successful freelance author that writes regularly for http://www.1st-in-spyware.com/ , a site that focuses exclusively on spyware removal software, as well as tips on how to prevent spyware from popping up on your computer. This site articles on has spyware guard, http://www.easy-spyware-killer.info/ as well as spyware scanner, http://www.easy-remove-spyware.info/

  • Win $10 million dollars against SPAMMERS, Mr. Braver did..

    I suspect that there will be more people seekings litigation against
    SPAMMERS after Robert Braver won $10 mill against a spam company.

    On Thursday the 22nd, Robert Braver, an
    Oklahoma ISP owner who is a long time activist against both spam and
    junk faxes, received a default judgment of over $10 million against
    high profile spammer Robert Soloway and his company Newport Internet
    Marketing.

    Coording to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003:

     (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited
    Pornography and Marketing Act) establishes
    requirements for those who send commercial
    email, spells out penalties for spammers
    and companies whose products are advertised
    in spam if they violate the law, and gives
    consumers the right to ask emailers to stop
    spamming them.

    Robert Soloway seems like a great contributor to the Internet!

    Long-term spammer and harvested list seller. Evidence shows him hiring
    virus authors to create spam “zombies”. Commits hundreds of felony
    violations of U.S. computer crime laws daily.

    This is the kind of action that it will take to slow down the epidemic
    of SPAM and malware.  The days of reaction are done. 
    Companies that react to penetrations and SPAM are going to continue to
    get nailed in the pocket.

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  • Dvorak's Blog Spam Fix

    Dvorak gets no spam, now he gets no blog spam. 

    But my spam problems have just begun:
    I started getting nailed with casino, porn and commercial site spam.  They trackback promoting Disney Trips, penis enlargements or, my favorite, Texas Holdem.  I still get a few spam links about every few weeks or so.  And I'm currently getting and giving traffic to a casino site.. and I haven't figured out how that is happening.  I'm sure these bastards are usings some kind of software to locate vulnerable (anonymous accepting) blogs and nuke them.  I've had to terminate my anonymous comments and I'm thinking of shutting down my Trackbacks.  I also blocked a few repeat offenders.  For me, that is unfortunate because the interaction (free comments, links to and from relevant sites of many different oppinions) is the coolest thing about blogs.  Blog innocence has come and gone over night.

    Appearently, Marc Perkel at ctyme.com has found a way to get rid of all spam providing you are using apache and on word press.

    He does it with this code:

    < location /blog/wp-comments-newpost.php >
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^.*dvorak.org/.*
    RewriteRule ^.* http://www.ctyme.com/comment-spam.html
    < /location >

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  • Comment Spammers Exploiting Open blogs

    I've recently experienced an increase in spam traffic on my blog.
    It started when I got about 20 comments in one day on one of my least
    popular articles.  I could see that the porn spammer had dug deep
    into my site and found a seemingly insignifigant article to place about
    100 links.  I deleted them imediately and blocked the IP from
    whince they came. 

    The very next day I had fifteen more.  I delete those and blocked
    that IP.  I've been forced to turn off my anonymous
    comments.  One of my favorite things about blogs is that anyone
    can say anything – they so refreshingly interactive that they create
    these close relationships with readers. 

    Unfortunately, casino, porn and pill spammers also see the power of
    blogs.  They target blogs with anonymous comments and
    trackbacks.  And they use thousands of hacked computers to act as
    proxies so that even if you block their IP they've got plenty more ways
    to get to you. 

    I've blocked them and I'm still seeing traffic coming from their sites
    which tells me that they have linked to my site and my visitors are
    clicking into their site then coming back to me. 

    Here is a list of Casino Spammers retreived from Netaloid.com

    “Finding our Poker Spammer’s identifying links is easy. Just
    visit one of his web pages by using one of the thousands of spam links
    he left on your site. Like poker.terashells.com, for instance. Then
    click on the links to the casino sites. You’ll see something like (or
    identical to) this:”

    http://www.pacificpoker.com/default.htm?sr=904970&flag=0002

    http://www.partypoker.com/index20100.htm?wm=2445773

    http://www.empirepoker.com/index.htm?wm=2170658

    http://banner.casinolasvegas.com/cgi-bin/redir.cgi?id=N&member=onlinecas&profile=lv2m

    http://www.888.com/default.htm?sr=611794&flag=0002

    http://www.starluckcasino.com/slcasino/links/56296.html

    http://www.aceclub.com/aceclub/links/1790.html

    http://www.reefclubcasino.com/default.htm?sr=806320&flag=0002

    For more on legally stopping Casino, Porn and other spammers visit:

    http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/353566831?ltl=1124161500

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/31/link_spamer_interview/

  • Congressional Spam Petition

    Tired of online Casinos Spamming your Blog's comments and trackbacks?
    Write congress to nuke spammers! Because it is time for spammers to pay
    for their crimes against humanity!

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  • Spam and Phishing, Europe and the USA against the scourge

    From the analysis of Trend Micro, a company that specializes in computer security, you can clearly see that the year 2004 was a record year for the distribution of computerized viruses: 30 attacks, 28 of which medium risk and two high risk. Three worms held the first position: Bagle, Mydoom and Netsky, which, together with their variants, were the cause of 25 of the registered attacks.

    Email was the preferred channel of diffusion of the several black hat hackers, but others chose to channel illegally to create more, serious damage. The indiscriminate sending of email messages and/or newsletters, Spam, without the consent of the receiver, is illegal. In some countries (the most developed ones), the authorities established that: to send email published without the consent of the receiver is illegal. If this activity is done systematically for profit, you also violate a criminal norm and could be reported to the judicial authorities.

    There are several sanctions, and in the worst case, imprisonment. The considerable damage that these activities have done to companies and people has been enormous moreover another tragedy called Phishing, the name given to the system that captures information, like passwords or other personal information, used by many criminal hackers and digital con artists pretend to be reliable people with a real need for information send false emails containing eBay, Pay Pal graphics and official logos and also offer Banking and Credit Card services, asking you to fill in a form enclose in the same email or on a web page with your personal data, and often with your passwords or Credit Card numbers. The form has nothing to do with the official organism imitated in the mail so the password or Credit Card number ends up in the data bank of the black hat who had sent the false email. The experts define this illegal practice as a form of “Social Engineering”.

    The latest news reported on this issue is that in order to fight the main threats coming through the web: Spam and Phishing, Europe and the United States have promoted two very distinct initiatives that will start at the same time. The intention is to defeat that virtual monster that has caused damage worth millions of Euro year after year, and according to the experts, will involve a considerable number of people. “Safer Internet Plus” is the project carried forward in Europe. The main target of the project is to beat Spam. The American project on the other hand is called “Digital PhishNet” and is based on the collaboration of several institutions, such as the FBI and private companies. The target is to identify and to bring to justice those people responsible for online fraud, thanks above all to the technique of Phishing.

    Glossary
    Computerized virus, means small programs able to change clone itself, self send in order to damage or make a network or a single machine vulnerable.

    Spamming means the indiscriminate sending of email and/or newsletter messages, without the consent of the receiver.

    According to the definition in “Wikipedia” the word Phishing is the capture of personal information, like passwords, personal information, the hacker hiding himself as a trustworthy person with a real need for that information. It is a form of “Social Engineering”.

    Social Engineering is the most simple and reliable means of obtaining information that you could not learn otherwise for example username or even your personal data (address, telephone number, etc).

    A Black Hat is a criminal hacker.