The OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) has issued new guidelines for consumer protection, and they include some references to spam. CNet has an article pointing out some of the specifics, but the gist is that they are encouraging the use of new electronic systems to share information about …

In a new twist reported by BBC News, a recent virus (called the AVF Virus) is finding its way around the net that opens up a back door for spammers to send their spam from infected machines. The virus appears to be a classic Trojan horse program, but in an …

CNET is reporting that John William Racine II, the man who convinced Network Solutions to give him control over the AlJazeera.net domain in the opening weeks of the Iraq War, has signed a plea agreement with prosecutors in California that would let him off with three years probation and …

An article in the Washington Post details some of the requests from the FTC for new authorities requested in the fight against spam. The requests may go to far, though, when they ask for criminal penalties for forging email addresses. In the typical governmental hyperbole, Orson Swindle of the FTC …

An article from Wired reports that the recent worm BugBear.B (distributed via email as an exclusive to Windows users) contains keystroke- logging code specifically designed to find passwords for financial institutions. All versions of Windows 95+ are affected. This is believed to be the first time that a worm …

Most anti-spam technology is aimed at stopping spam coming in to your inbox. However, large service providers, such as Yahoo! also have to deal with preventing spam from being sent from their systems. An article from CNET today describes such a system being implemented by Yahoo! The system monitors the …

A page on Librenix has a number of cute haiku poems. These include:Overclock your boxit is very fast ... at firstwarranty now void

For those of us who have machines that cannot boot in OS 9, it comes as a relief to hear that Symantec is going to be releasing version 8.0 of Norton Utilities for the Macintosh, which will not only boot under OS X, but also include substantial speed enhancements …

If you have Yahoo! messenger installed on your machine you should move immediately to get it patched to fix the latest security hole in the software. The most recent finding was a so-called buffer overflow error which can be used to gain access to the user's machine over the internet …

If you have any interest in the technical side of internet security, read this article on SlashDot. It's a set of Q&A with Fyodor (author of NMAP).

A report from Wired alerts that Microsoft has once again withdrawn an update from their site due to an "inadvertent" problem with the Windows XP security update. According to the company, "Most systems didn't crash; they simply lost network connectivity." Perhaps they should check out what most users use their …

CNET is carrying an interesting article this morning about the down side of Challenge-Response anti-spam utilities. Although it is mainly precautionary, it does make some good points that anyone using (or designing an implementation of ) the technology should be aware of. It also contained a pointer to a page by …

BBC News is carrying a good overview article on filtering using Bayesian filters to attempt to figure out what messages in your inbox are indeed spam. If you are interested in trying it out (only for the technically savvy), you can take a look at CRM114, a SourceForge project for …

CNET reports that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has sent a letter to the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation outlining the official Microsoft line on spam. The committee hearing was attended by the Vice Chairman of AOL, Brightmail's CEO, the Executive Director of EPIC (Mark Rotenberg) , and …

An article in CNET reports that there is a patent lawsuit brewing over challenge-response anti-spam software. The good news is that there is a lot of prior art, and the folks who have it (including Brad Templeton, early chariman of the EFF] ) are very willing to help in the lawsuits …

In an amusing twist of fate, the folks who run many of the popular IRC servers have succeeded in installing an uninstaller on one of the web sites that the Fizzer worm uses to update itself. This will cause the virus to remove all traces of itself if it goes …

Security Focus reports that an effort led by the ACM is attempting to get a security research exemption enacted for the DMCA. The idea is simple, since the "black hats" are going to violate the law anyway, the "white hats" should have a chance to legally locate, solve, and publicize …

We all hate spam. Now, our legislators are finally starting to get into the act and we need to take a look at some of the Bills that they are writing and debating on our behalf. Of particular concern is the wide divergence of state and local anti-spam laws that …

A significant vulnerability in Microsoft's Passport facility was found by a security enthusiast. The exploit allows the changing of arbitrary passwords to arbitrary accounts, and through such access to services, personal information, and potentially hotmail email. Microsoft has been alerted to the problem, but has not responded with a …

No, they're not getting $16.4M for being purveyors of fine spam. Instead, they have received a judgment in that amount from Howard Carmack (no relation to the games developer) from Buffalo, NY who reportedly sent (with his "ring" of spammers) some 825 million pieces of spam using EarthLink's …