Archives: October, 2009
Country-Based Blocking
Is it good or bad? Well the answer is "it depends." If your organization only operates within North-America, for instance, blocking the more prolific spam sources by country may be a very good way to reduce the amount of traffic hitting your MTA. (Oct 30, 2009)
Do the Crime…Do the Time?
Should Cybercriminals face life in jail? Announced this week in New Delhi, India, cyber-terrorism is now punishable with life-time imprisonment. An amendment was made to the Information Technology Act that was passed in 2008 to now include new-age cyber offences such as identity theft, cyber stalking, and cyber harassment among others. (Oct 28, 2009)
We need spam to sell our anti-spam
The ISP market is a jungle: it’s every man for himself and leave the wounded behind. Some time ago, I subscribed to a big ISP (that shall remain nameless) that was leading the market. When I subscribed, I gave my chosen username for the email address – although it was included with the service I never used it (I didn’t even configure it). The username is a mix of things that make it unique and pretty much unreachable through dictionary attacks, something like 667gptfoo99x@. (Oct 26, 2009)
Is Email Dead? Don’t believe the Hype!
With all the buzz around social media (and notably so), industry analysts are declaring email a thing of “the past” and that social media applications, namely sites like Twitter and Facebook, will take over as our online method of communications. As technology evolves, it drives the habits of consumers. (Oct 23, 2009)
Drive by Downloads
This is a term I’m seeing more and more frequently in security-related web posts and, frankly, I thought it was fairly new. After doing some research, however, I found an article entitled, Anatomy of a “Drive-by-Download,” that was written in 2004 (!) by Eric L. Howes. Where have I been all this time? (Oct 21, 2009)
Who do you trust?
There were 2 major malware waves last week that caused a big impact. The first one involved the Outlook Notification virus, which some major AV providers were still unable to catch even after 12 hours in the wild. (Oct 19, 2009)
Three Reasons Why Cloud Computing May Not Be For You
Email Security. Love it or hate it, it needs to be addressed. Many small businesses often don’t have the money or resources to invest in installing and maintaining a secure mail system, and consequently look to outsource this very important aspect of their business. Email is a mission-critical application, forming the backbone for most organizations’ day-to-day business activities. So why not offload the security aspect of your email so you can focus on your actual business? (Oct 14, 2009)
10 Best Spam Subject Lines
Spam definitely comes in all shapes and sizes. We asked you to submit your best subject lines and after much deliberation we came up with the top ten list (and it was no easy feat!)
10 "a stone for making tortillas, a mortar for grinding red pepper."
9 "A cell phone glitch accidentally making millionaires" (Oct 09, 2009)
What’s the (cyber)world coming to?
Am I the only one who’s getting creeped out by the increasingly sinister tone of the latest cyberthreats making the rounds? Several news items from the past couple of days make me want to unplug my computer and forget I’d ever heard of the Internet. (Oct 07, 2009)
Hello my Friend… My name is Irina
Since “Russian wife” spam is on the rise, I’ll take this occasion to tell you a little story. An old colleague (let’s call him John) answered one of those messages about 2 or 3 years ago, just to see how things would go. The “girl” replied very quickly, and they soon began chatting about almost everything. (Oct 05, 2009)
Email Security Gateway Deployment: Avoid These Common Mistakes
Don't declare your primary mail server (MTA) as a secondary MX. (Oct 02, 2009)
