There were a couple of news items that I thought were interesting enough, albeit unrelated, to comment on. The first (story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8537771.stm)
is that Microsoft has taken legal action to shut down the Waldec botnet, and folks are divided about whether there was any point to it.
While I don’t expect it to cause any noticeable lessening of spam, I’m pleased that they did it. Spam-sending is a business, after all, and if you can create a situation where it costs more to run it than they are making, then they might actually stop. After all, if your outgo exceeds your income, then your upkeep becomes your downfall.
On a related note, I would like to point out that the number one threat that we see every day is actually Rogue anti virus software, and while all the anti virus companies do their best to block them, the only way to actually eradicate them is to attack their business model.
You see, all the Rogue avs are associated with a Rogue merchant, who processes the credit card payments. If Visa and the other cc companies shut down the merchants, that would nearly be an extinction level event for a whole class of malware.
Easy really.
The second story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8536684.stm) involved a British politician who had her Twitter account hacked (or more likely phished), and then had bogus and embarrassing tweets sent on her behalf.
Well…. Yep. This is the minimum that happens when you get any of your passwords phished. It’s the exact reason why you should use multiple passwords, rather than just one. Have a different password for each online property, and either store them in a password manager, or use the low-tech solution of writing them down and keeping them in your wallet. At least if you lose your wallet, you know you have to cancel all your credit cards, and change your passwords.
It’s a tricky world out there folks… keep safe.