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Editorial

Spyware seems to be the fastest growing threat we have to contend with now, apart from SPAM. Spyware is a general term for a program that surreptitiously monitors your actions. While they are sometimes sinister, like a remote control program used by a hacker, software companies have been known to use Spyware to gather data about customers and most often comes to you via SPAM or just visiting a website.

There are many software application available to help you control Spyware, some free such as Ad-aware and Spybot. Of course these applications clean out the Spyware you already have loaded on your computer. If it's already there, what has it been doing up to the point of removal?

I think there may be a better way, and that is to try and stop Spyware from entering your computer in the first place. I am currently reviewing a a number of packages, one called Spyware Doctor by PC Tools, so far I have been clear of Spyware for a couple of weeks. I will provide some performance results and recommendations next month.

Bruce Beresford, Manager & Editor

In this Issue:

• Featured Site
• Virus Watch
• Alleged spammer raided
• Spammer gets nine years
• Mac OS X faces hacker threats: Symantec
• Tech Tips - Four Registry tweaks to accelerate Windows XP
• Quotes of the day

Featured Site  

Welcome to the world of motorcycle sport.

Australia has a long and proud history of success in motorcycle sport and whether you take up the sport as a hobby or as a competitor, we hope you enjoy every minute of it.

Motorcycle sport is spectacular and great fun. You can make a career as a professional rider or just be an everyday racer who competes at club or state level. You decide just how serious you wish to make it or how fast you want to go.

There are different levels of competition and events to cater for everyone. Motorcycling Australia has an accredited coaching program which will help you achieve your goals.

Visit the Motorcycling NSW website...

Virus Watch  

Latest Threats - from Symantec

19-04-05 W32.Mytob.AW@mm

19-04-05 W32.Kelvir.AC

Look out for this EMAIL:

It will most probably be from an address with "flexiprint" in the sending address... It’s an email with a credible from address, credible header, credible subject line, credible contents:

Hello,

From: admin@flexiprint.com

Subject: Photo Approval Needed

Your photograph was forwarded to us as part of an article we are publishing for our May edition of Business Review Monthly. Can you check over the format and get back to us with your approval or any changes you would like.

If the photograph is not to your liking then please attach a preferred one. We have uploaded the photo and article here, http://www.publishing.0catch.com/Photo_Approval.zip

Kind regards,

John Andrews
Dept. Marketing
http://www.FlexiPrint.com

There are many different versions of this, some with an attached zip file and others referring you to a site (like this one) where you are asked to download an image. There does seem to be a number of things common though, the name flexiprint and John Andrews.

Article from Jeremy Wagstaff http://loosewireblog.com

The attached, or URL accessed zip file, "photo-approval-needed.zip" contains a screen-saver executable, which, according to CodePhish’s Daniel McNamara, is an IRC trojan for building a botnet. In English this means compromising the victim’s computer so it can be controlled remotely to send spam, viruses and stuff. The compromised computer is called a zombie and the big collection of remotely controlled zombies is called a botnet.

While Daniel says the trojan is not that sophisticated it does do a pretty good job of turning off Windows XP’s firewall turning it, in his words, “into Swiss cheese”.

I’m more impressed, however, at the social engineering. Who wouldn’t wonder whether the picture might contain a picture of them, and why wouldn’t they be written up in Flexiprint’s Business Monthly? Only by opening the zip file, or by checking out Flexiprint’s website (which resolves to business Internet solutions provider altoHiway), would the recipient start sniffing a rat.

This goes to underline a point that is sometimes skated over in advice given to the casual Internet user: It’s not enough to scour a suspicious email for bad grammar, odd formatting or strange header fields. Sometimes these give up few clues. Best rule of thumb is: If you’re not expecting an email from the sender, be suspicious.

Alleged spammer raided  

The communications regulator has executed a search warrant at the Perth premises of a company alleged to have sent tens of millions of unsolicited emails.

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) acted on a search warrant issued by the Federal Magistrates Court. The warrant was issued on the grounds that "the ACA reasonably suspected the company of sending tens of millions of unsolicited commercial emails in breach of the Spam Act 2003", the regulator said in a statement.

The raid comes within days of the ACA's announcement that it had fined Melbourne-based motor trading website carsales.com.au $6,500 for sending unsolicited text messages to mobile phone numbers harvested from its classified pages. AustralianIT >>> more

Spammer gets nine years  

A US judge has sentenced a man to nine years in prison for violating anti-spam laws by sending out millions of unsolicited e-mails using fake addresses.

The judge sentenced Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, North Carolina, accepting the recommendation of a jury that convicted him last November, prosecutor Lisa Hicks-Thomas said.
Ms Hicks-Thomas said the sentence under Virginia law was the first prison term in the United States in a spam case, adding that the state law on spam was used to model a federal spam law approved later by Congress.

'It was not just sending bulk e-mails, he was falsifying the routing information, disguising the origin," she said.

"The end-user couldn't say 'don't sent this to me.'"

Jaynes, who operated using the alias "Gaven Stubberfield," was listed by the anti-spam watchdog group Spamhaus as the eighth most prolific spammer in the world.

Ms Hicks-Thomas said prosecutors calculated that Jaynes took in between $US500,000 ($648,000) and $US750,000 a month through the sale of products through the e-mails.

She said Jaynes also possessed a stolen database of America Online members with some 84 million e-mail addresses.

Mac OS X faces hacker threats: Symantec  

Security vendor Symantec is warning that Apple's OS X operating system is increasingly becoming a target for hackers and malware authors.

In its seventh bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report, Symantec said over the past year, security researchers had discovered at least 37 serious vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X system. According to Symantec, as Apple increases its market share--with new low cost products such as the Mac mini--its userbase is likely to come under increasing attack.

"Contrary to popular belief, the Macintosh operating system has not always been a safe haven from malicious code," Symantec said. "Out of the public eye for some time, it is now clear that the Mac OS is increasingly becoming a target for the malicious activity that is more commonly associated with Microsoft and various Unix-based operating systems," the report said. ZD NetAustralia >>> more

Tech Tips  

Four Registry tweaks to accelerate Windows XP

There are plenty of third party programs that claim to tweak or optimize Windows. However, what most of them ultimately do is to simply make Registry edits. Here are four tweaks that experienced IT professionals can manually make to improve the speed of Windows XP. WARNING - if you are not proficient at making changes to your system registry, don't go it alone, get help for an experienced user.

Quotes of the Day  

I have learned to use the word 'impossible' with the greatest caution. Wernher von Braun (1912 - 1977)

My mother buried three husbands, and two of them were just napping. Rita Rudner

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people. Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924)

Brought to you by The Quotations Page

Have any questions relating to the internet or your computer? Let me know and I will research an answer and use this for future entries in our newsletter. Pass on your questions via the Enquiry Form on our Web-Site or send me an email.

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