Hoodoo Guru

And the good news is ...

And the good news is?

frank

Spamhaus Listing Process

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Spamhaus is one organization not to be trusted.

Their Listing Process and Policies are shit. One of our servers ended up on their list and there is nothing they are prepared to do about it. It seems that they have found a couple of servers sending SPAM but then Spamhaus decided to list everyone on the same sub-net. They have effectively wiped out 8190 hosts because a few hosts (less than 1%) have been found to be the source of SPAM.

What a way to run an organization. According to their policy, because I have been listed, due to someone else on the same network, I am now cybercriminal spammer that can’t be trusted.

So lets put this a simpler, hypothetical way and transpose servers to sex offenders.

The police know that there are a number of sex offenders living in York Street, London. They have tried to identify who they are but its getting a bit hard. They want to be seen as catching sex offenders so to produce results, just declare every person living in York Street a sex offender and solve the problem.

How about running a sex offenders website. You get information that there are a few sex offenders in London. But it involves work to identify where the sex offenders are so just declare that everyone living in London is a sex offender.  Don’t worry about the people who are not sex offenders, it is their problem for living in an area where there are a few.  At-least we can tell the world how good we are at identifying sex offenders.

Of course we all know that is not true, but it is the same analogy. Just don’t let these guys run your police department.

Malware? What Malware?

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MalwareIt is still mind boggling to see the amount of ignorance that exists around the Internet community.

Producers of Malware are no longer the geeky kids, swilling coke in their bedroom, disrupting the Internet for kicks. Malware authors are motivated by greed, are business savvy and sell their services to organized crime syndicates.

When end users take little or no responsibility to maintain their computers they are taking a very big risk. It also makes sure that computer hackers and organized crime have a very bright future.

In one recent example, Avast was able to identify Malware on a website that (for now) shall remain nameless. The response from the administrators of the website was that there was no Malware on their site and since Avast is developed in Eastern Europe it simply shouldn’t be trusted because it is blocking their website for no reason.

The malware used the PhpRemoteView hack, a malicious JavaScript redirecting you to fake search engines full of ads and malicious software. Simply Viewing the HTML source, one could spot the malicious code from an aero-plane.

So, our Hacker and Administrator come together in beautiful harmony. Our hacker gets what he wants, and our Administrator makes the whole thing work because he refuses to accept that he has a problem.

Today Microsoft released their 11th Security Intelligence Report (SIR).

The report provides threat trends and data analysis on topics like software vulnerabilities, exploits, malicious code and potentially unwanted software. It is great reading and shows that the devide between the trend we need to see vs the actual trend is growing.

The report is great news for our hackers and shows strong growth in their business for years to come.

Expect more attacks from Anonymous

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Today the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has published community and industry submissions into improved transparency and accountability measures surrounding the Government’s internet filtering plans.

The 174 submissions will be used to feed into its legislative framework. Submissions were received for the usual suspects including Telstra, Optus, Microsoft, Electronic Frontiers Australia and Google.
Many submissions appeared to be from individuals with passionate pleas.

“A range of views have been expressed in the submissions and I would like to thank everyone who contributed their comments and valuable ideas to the public consultation process,” Conroy said in a statement.

One submission was from the vocal protest group “Anonymous”. Anonymous warned that that they will launch more cyber attacks in protest over the government’s plans to introduce mandatory filtering.

“We are Anonymous … EXPECT US!,” the group said in its comments in a part of the submission related to the banned content list and classification process.

Senator Conroys office will now work with other government agencies to consider the submissions and examine whether the ideas can be used to enhance the proposed accountability and transparency measures.”

The legislation would be introduced into parliament once these processes were complete, he said.

Protest group Anonymous said in a submission on the government’s proposed internet filter that it will launch more cyber attacks in protest over the government’s plans to introduce mandatory filtering to censor internet content.

Hoping Google will voluntarily filter for Australia

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Communications Minister Stephen Conroy had apparently entered discussions with Google to block access to video content in Australia. He had just learned that it was not technically feasible to filter Youtube at the ISP level. Bugger that !.

Conroy then told a Senate Estimates committee that it was technically infeasible to apply his proposed filtering regime to web sites like YouTube because it would introduce performance issues.

“[Google] are experts at deep packet filtering. They’re probably the world’s leading deep packet filterer, unbeknownst to most people. “They have experience in blocking material in other countries at the behest of governments, including China, Thailand and a number of other countries,” he stated.

Google, however, is having none of it, denying both Conroy’s claims about deep-packet filtering and suggestions it would voluntarily filter RC content. “We don’t believe the comparisons between how China filters the Internet, and how Australia is looking at it, are relevant,” stated Google Australia head of policy Iarla Flynn.

Perhaps unbeknownst to Conroy is the fact Google don’t enjoy having to stiffle freedom of speach in any contry. They are not some magic potion that can be called upon to voluntarily comply.

You can thanks the stupid Mums and Dads of this country who all voted for this and to task the governement to control the internet because they have no idea what is really causing the problem and don’t wnat to listen to reason.

At the moment “Government busts child pornography ring” gets headlines on every single channel, whereas “Massive unrest at new ultra strict internet censorship” barely gets a footnote on a news website.

“In the interview Conroy acknowledged that filtering, when applied to YouTube, “would slow the internet down”. ”

Remember, the Govt has already started banning legal movies that show naked girls with A cup breasts, regardless of age, because it could be misinterpreted at kiddy porn…