TECHNICALLY SPEAKING VIRUS AND OTHER STINKY STUFF INTERESTING SITES
Suspected spam king Christopher Smith (also known as "Rizler") is expected to appear in court today after his arrest at Minneapolis St Paul International airport.
Smith was arrested shortly after midnight after stepping off a flight on Thursday 30 June from the Dominican Republic. Smith had been operating there since a US federal judge in May shut down his lucrative businesses, Burnsville Internet and Xpress Pharmacy Direct, and ordered him to stop selling drugs.
Through his companies, Smith is alleged to have sent more than one billion spam emails either to AOL email addresses or through AOL email accounts. The FBI claims that Smith has already made about $18 million this year.
"There are huge profits to be made from spam, and organised criminals are prepared to break many laws in their greed for money. Rizler has been one of the most notorious spammers, and anyone who has been deluged with spam offering medication and drugs will welcome the US authorities making progress in this case," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "Of course, spam wouldn't be profitable if no-one bought the goods sold via spam. Everyone should protect their email accounts from spam and viruses, and think twice before ever purchasing goods advertised via unsolicited email."
According to the FBI, 25-year-old Smith had flown to the Dominican Republic under a false passport, used a cash card to obtain money from a bank account after it had been seized by a court order, and had his wife Anita, his Minnesota girlfriend and others bring him thousands of dollars in cash.
On May 10, federal authorities raided Xpress Pharmacy and Smith's home, seizing his passport and $4.2 million in assets, including a $1.1 million house and luxury vehicles worth $1.8 million. At the same time the FBI closed down his 85-employee company. Investigators concluded that Smith had been selling medicines to customers without proper prescriptions and selling drugs without a license. Smith appeared in a federal court after the raid, but four days later fled to the Dominican Republic.
The US Attorney's office claims that Smith had broken court orders, and is recommending that he be held in criminal contempt and jailed for six months.
Court documents allege that by 21 June, Smith had used aliases to set up new websites and was selling drugs without prescriptions online and through a new call center he had set up in the Dominican Republic.
Sophos recommends companies protect themselves with a consolidated solution which can defend businesses from the threats of both spam and viruses.
Glad you mentioned that, Rog. Indeed, when your USB drive works on some of your PC's ports but not others, improper internal cabling is the #1 suspect!
The longstanding Zafi-D worm accounts for more than a quarter of all viruses reported to Sophos so far this year. Dominating the top of the monthly virus charts for the first four months, this Hungarian worm uses the guise of a Christmas greeting to trick users into opening its infected attachment.
"Most surprising is that Zafi-D managed to hang around long after the festive season and well into the Spring," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "It's only in the last two months that Zafi-D has started to lose its stranglehold on the chart, but it's still a significant threat."
The bilingual Sober-N, which takes third place on the six-month chart having first emerged in May, stormed to the top of the virus chart last month - finally knocking Zafi-D from the top spot. Posing as tickets to the 2006 World cup in Germany, Sober-N compromised thousands of PCs in 40 countries.
Sober-N waited silently in the background of infected PCs, before upgrading itself to a newer version in order to churn out German nationalistic spam from the compromised, 'zombie' computers.
"The Sober family of worms show just how much damage can now be done through a zombie machine," said Cluley. "The combined effort of spammers, virus writers and their zombie armies are certainly a force to be reckoned with. Increasingly, legitimate organisations are being thrown into the firing line - finding themselves being identified as sources of spam."
"The threats are consolidating - its becoming more blurred as to whether something is a spam, a spyware, a phish, or a virus problem. Businesses must ensure they are protected against all of these threats," continued Cluley. "Furthermore, it makes sense to source your security solution from a vendor who has expertise in all of these areas in-house - allowing nothing to slip through the net."
Another old-timer, Netsky-P, which was the hardest-hitting virus of 2004, has enjoyed an extremely long reign near the top of the virus chart so far in 2005. German teenager Sven Jaschan, who admitted writing the Netsky and Sasser worms more than a year ago, will face trial next week for computer sabotage, data manipulation and disruption of public systems.
"Even though Jaschan's worms continue to spread and cause problems for many computer users, he's likely to avoid a prison sentence because of his age," said Cluley. "When comparing a dumb teenager with other internet criminals who plot to steal millions of credit card details or bank account information from infected PCs, it's clear who should get the harsher sentences."
2005 has so far seen several highly publicised arrests relating to computer crime. In May, Israeli police managed to track down a London based couple, who were arrested for writing malicious software that was used by Israeli companies to spy on their competitors. The previous month saw the arrest of a Cypriot man who spied on a 17-year old girl via her webcam after infecting her PC with a Trojan horse. A similar scenario resulted in a Spanish student being fined.
Sophos has seen a threefold increase in the number of keylogging Trojans so far this year. Trojans are delivered to target organisations via email attachments or links to websites. They are often used by remote hackers to steal privileged information and very often, to launch further attacks. In June, an NISCC investigation, which Sophos assisted with, found that nearly 300 UK government departments and businesses have been the subject of Trojan horse attacks.
"What we are witnessing is a stampede of new Trojan horses every day," said Cluley. "Although some familiar worms have a tight grip on the charts, the growth in Trojan horses is perhaps the most significant development in malware-writing. Trojans don't normally make the charts because they don't spread under their own steam, and are increasingly being used for targeted attacks designed to make money or steal information."
The prevalence of organised computer crime is higher than ever. The attempted breach at the Sumitomo Mitsui bank in London and the MasterCard hack are prime examples of the continued trend towards financially motivated computer crime.
Variants of the Mytob worm are also prevalent in the chart at sixth and eighth places. More recent versions of the worm have adopted a new trick, most commonly used by phishers, which includes a faked web link pointing to the malicious code. Each new Mytob variant has been tweaked slightly differently, which indicates that the authors may be searching for the elements of their malicious code that will help them create a super worm. Sophos believes that it is unlikely that we have seen the last of this family of worms.
The total number of viruses protected against by Sophos now stands at 106,218.
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Trend Micro, more commonly referred to as Housecall, offers free virus scans and in most cases can fix damage down by a virus or worm that your computer may have contacted. The program works well. The first time one uses the free program it is necessary to download a small program. Trend Micro walks you through the process. Then the virus scans are quite simple for each return. Go to http://housecall.antivirus.com/ then choose the link "Scan without registering". Follow the directions.
You should disable any anti virus program that you have running. If you do not have a virus program I recommend that you use one of the programs offered above first and then download and install one of the free programs listed below or install any anti virus program you have purchased.
TRY ETRUST BY COMPUTER ASSOCIATES (Ken Condo found this link-thanks Ken) 1 year free trial of eTrust or 2 years for $19.95. http://home.ca.com/dr/v2/ec_main.entry25?page=PYPCTrialPage&client=ComputerAssociates&sid=35715&CID=185351
AVG Free AVG Free Edition is the well-known anti-virus protection tool. AVG Free is available free-of-charge to home users for the life of the product! Rapid virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product, thereby providing the high-level of detection capability that millions of users around the world trust to protect their computers. AVG Free is easy-to-use and will not slow your system down (low system resource requirements). http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5
Avast Avast has been "anti virusing" for quite awhile. The following info comes from their download page: Avast! Home is now free of charge for HOME users for NON-COMMERCIAL use. You can find more info here. http://www.avast.com/eng/down_home.html Note: This product is free for home non-commercial use after registration! HINTS: Click on the English Version Link and download the installation file. Then click on the installation file and follow the directions. You will need to return to the download page and click on the link to get the registration key. It will be sent to you in an email after you provide some registration information. This will give you 14 months of coverage including any updates which can be set to auto download. You can reregister for additional free coverage at the end of the 14 months. You will want to browse around and choose from the many options available for operation. This process will take some time and digging.
Another good free program is: http://www.free-av.com/ This one installs a bit easier than Avast.
1. JAVA_BYTEVER.A 2. HTML_NETSKY.P 3. TSPY_SMALL.SN 4. SPYW_GATOR 5. WORM_NETSKY.P
Here are a few sites of many that can help you determine if an email is a hoax or real.
http://www.quatloos.com/ http://www.snopes.com/ http://vil.nai.com/VIL/hoaxes.asp http://kumite.com/myths/ http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html http://www.scambusters.org/VirusHoaxes.html http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes/ http://www.truthorfiction.com/
Back to College This one from Amanda. Going back to school after not going to college right away is a very daunting idea for some. What will the other students think? How will you get financial aid? What do you need to do to register? While all those questions have crossed my mind—I know that going back to college will be rewarding. I'm lucky in having living proof of how successful adult students can be when they go back because my mom got her education a little bit at time, until she graduated at age 40 with her masters in Education. But not everyone is lucky enough to have such a shining example of why going back to college can be rewarding, and facing the decision to go back to college myself honestly had the butterflies in my stomach in an uproar, so I went looking for a site that makes the whole process easier. And I found one that does just that. Back to College provides all the resources you need before making the big step of returning to school. On the side menu you will notice the options of Getting Started, FAQ, Admissions, Financial Aid, Degree Programs, Online Degrees, Online Courses, Career Planning, Credit Options, Internships, Academics, Discount Textbooks, Cool Tools and Special Reports. While we aren't going to discuss all of these, I will tell you that I read them all from Getting Started to Special Reports and boy did answer a lot of my questions. I wanted to know how to get financial aid, something that scared the heck out of me when I was 18. Everyone suddenly wanted money from me—money I didn't have. So I dropped my course load and said "no way Jose!" Now I know how it all works and can make educated choices about how to pay for college. I highly recommend the FAQ. It really touches on a lot of what you'll want to know when you go back to college. The other really great thing about this site is that you can get answers from those who have been through it before in the Forums section—you can find the tab for the forums near the top of the page. Congratulations to those of you, who like me, are thinking of going Back to College. http://www.back2college.com/
craftygal Another suggestion by Amanda. This is a really cool crafty site that doesn't just stick to sewing, crocheting, and such. Here you can find Cooking, and Interviews with crafty people. Scraps — this is where you find letters from the editors on this site. This is a craft ‘zine from what I understand, and a very witty one at that. Fridge — if you guessed that this section is about Food and Drink, then you'd be right! Get the featured recipe or you can check out the archives for more. Porch — Here you'll find interviews with individuals from all sorts of crafting styles. When I was there the feature article was on Jenny from Sublime Stitching. It was a thorough article on Jenny and Sublime Stitching, and it made me remember how badly I wanted to learn to embroider! Table — This section is all about Craft Instruction. Here you can find tons of nifty things to do with those creative urges. When I was there the article was on Painting Leather boots to spruce them up with some décor. Trés chic! Stump — this section is full of personal essays on lots of different subjects. You're sure to find something that will entertain you and educate you. Travels — adventures with gals. This section is reminiscent of a travel diary. From just trips to the spa to events around town and the country, lots of interesting reading for you, and some quirky ideas too. I really fell in love with this site from one crafty person to another I hope you enjoy it! http://www.craftygal.com/
So Much More to Know …This site is for the inquisitive. From the nature of the cosmos to the nature of societies, there are 100 questions that span the sciences. Some are pieces of questions; others are big questions in their own right. Some will drive scientific inquiry for the next century; others may soon be answered. Many will undoubtedly spawn new questions. http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/
Advertising Pictures Clever, some are on the verge of genius and some just downright funny. http://garicruze.typepad.com/ad_blather/ NON-USA ads are better: http://www.visit4info.com/
Ahh, Leg Room Thanks to Bob Rankin of "Tourbus". A couple of Tourbus frequent flyers wrote to tell me about SeatGuru. This site won't make air travel faster or less expensive, but it just might make it a bit more comfortable. You'll find ratings of each individual seat on the planes of about 20 different airlines. If legroom, reclinability, noise, and laptop power ports are important factors for you, pay a visit to SeatGuru. http://www.seatguru.com
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