Fighting malware and spam

News summary

MyDoom soap opera continues, hacker sentenced, Bill Gates' anti-spam crusade

The MyDoom soap opera continues with NAI's Jimmy Kuo noting that MyDoom appears to have versioning-system codes in its source code, suggesting it is the work of a professional programmer.

This may be of some interest, but little consolation for SCO, which is starting a backup website (www.thescogroup.com) in light of the fact that any server to which 'www.sco.com' points is likely to melt.

Reuters considers that Microsoft is more likely to survive the MyDoom attack, in no small part due to the lower prevalence of the B variant (the variant targeting Microsoft).

Despite the $500,000 award for turning in the MyDoom author, there is no evidence that law enforcement bodies are any closer to finding the culprits.

In slightly more up-beat news, a UK teenager has been sentenced for hacking into systems at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago. The Register has some more detailed information.

Bill Gates and Microsoft are receiving quite a bit of coverage of their anti-spam plans... Mr Gates recently explained that spam would not be a problem in two years' time, due to Microsoft's movements on sender-pays email, as set out in his 1996 book 'The Road Ahead'.

It certainly seems that more will be required in addition to legal methods for reducing spam - Brightmail is reporting a not too surprising increase in spam since the CAN-SPAM bill went into effect.

President Bush has asked Congress for $8.5m to be given to the FTC to help them fight spam - coinciding quite nicely with the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) stating that governments must act together to reduce spam. Apparently spam is is responsible for reduced online sales amid fears that giving out contact details will result in a deluge of spam for consumers.

03 February 2004

Tags:    del.icio.us   digg this

Poll

VB2009