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DNS / blogs / May 07, 2008 10:11 AM PST

Coders, Crackers and Bots, Oh My!

There are more than just blue, black and white hat hackers. There are a few more types of folks out there that don't fit into the above categories. This article is taken from Stratfor with some commentary by myself... Many of the hackers described in my previous post are also coders, or "writers," who create viruses, worms, Trojans, bot protocols and other destructive "malware" tools used by hackers... ›››

DNS / blogs / May 07, 2008 9:45 AM PST

Black Hats, White Hats, Crackers and Bots

One of the other web sites I subscribe to is Stratfor. It's a global intelligence website and doesn't really have much to do with spam. But I like politics so I read it. They have some articles which you can get for free, but the better stuff you have to pay for. About two weeks ago, they ran a three-part series on Cyberwarfare. The first article was the title of this post, which you can access here (requires registration). In the article they described different types of cybercriminals and not-so-criminals which they referred to under the umbrella as "hackers." ›››

DNS / blogs / May 04, 2008 12:44 PM PST

Jeremy Jaynes Gets One More Chance

n 2004 Jaynes became the country's first convicted spam felon under the Virginia anti-spam law. He's been appealing his conviction ever since, most recently losing an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court by a 4-3 decision in February. As I discussed in more detail at the time the key questions were a) whether the Virginia law had First Amendment problems and b) whether Jaynes had standing to challenge it. The court answered No to b), thereby avoiding the need to answer a), the dissent answered Yes to both. ›››

DNS / news / Apr 30, 2008 11:28 AM PST

Significant Chunk of IP Address Space Hijacked by Notorious Mass Emailing Company

Internet address space long ago issued to San Francisco Bay Packet Radio, an organization that was involved way back in the 1970s in testing ARPANET, a predecessor to the global commercial Internet that we all use today. That organization was given the rights to do whatever it wanted with 134.17.0.0/16 address block. That entire swath of Internet space is now registered to an entity in Westminster, Colo., called SF Bay Packet Radio LLC, but except for a similar name, this company has no relation to San Francisco Bay Packet Radio... ? ›››

DNS / blogs / Apr 30, 2008 10:29 AM PST

Colorado Has a New Spam Law

The governor of Colorado recently signed a new anti-spam law [PDF] into effect. Since CAN SPAM draws a tight line around what states can do, this law is mostly interesting for the way that it pushes as firmly against that line as it can. Other observers have already done a legal analysis of the way it's worded to avoid being tossed out as the Oklahoma law was in Mummagraphics, and to make it as easy as possible for suits to meet the falsity or deception limits in CAN SPAM. To me the most interesting part of this law is its one-way fee recovery language... ›››

DNS / news / Apr 25, 2008 12:20 PM PST

Spam Turns 30

Thirty years ago next week, Gary Thuerk, a marketer at the now-defunct computer firm Digital Equipment Corporation, sent an email to 393 users of Arpanet, the US government-run computer network that eventually became the internet. It was the first spam email ever. That commercial message, sent on 3 May 1978, drew a swift and negative reaction. ›››

DNS / blogs / Apr 11, 2008 1:19 PM PST

If It Spams Like a Duck…

We've been wondering what e360 hoped to gain with their recent lawsuits against Spamhaus and others. If they were trying to clarify the right of ISPs to protect their users from spam, then they've certainly done a good job -- especially in this particular case. If it wasn't clear before, Judge Zagel's explanation should satisfy even the most pedantic of filtering opponents: "ISPs acting in good faith to protect their customers are not liable for blocking messages that some spammer claims are not spam..." ›››

DNS / blogs / Apr 11, 2008 12:40 PM PST

Comcast 1, E360 0

The judge in E360 vs. Comcast filed his order yesterday (read previous postings here and here), and to put it mildly, he agreed with Comcast. It starts: "Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an Internet marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer." ...and from E360's viewpoint, goes downhill from there. ›››

DNS / blogs / Apr 07, 2008 10:00 AM PST

Sender Address Verification: Still a Bad Idea

A lot of spam uses fake return addresses. So back around 2000 it occurred to someone that if there were a way to validate the return addresses in mail, they could reject the stuff with bad return addresses. A straightforward way to do that is a callout, doing a partial mail transaction to see if the putative sender's mail server accepts mail to that address. This approach was popular for a few years, but due to its combination of ineffectiveness and abusiveness, it's now used only by small mail systems whose managers don't know any better. What's wrong with it? ›››

DNS, Whois / blogs / Apr 03, 2008 9:30 AM PST

An Open Letter to Yahoo!’s Postmaster

In June 2004, Yahoo! and a number of other companies got together to announce the Anti-Spam Technical Alliance or ASTA. While it appears to have been largely silent since then, ASTA did at least publish an initial set of best practices the widespread adoption of which could possibly have had some impact on spam... The majority of these are clearly aimed at ISPs and end users, but some are either generally or specifically relevant to email providers such as Yahoo!, Google or Microsoft... The problem: Since February this year, we have been receiving a significant quantity of spam emails from Yahoo!'s servers. In addition to their transport via the Yahoo! network, all originate from email addresses in yahoo.com, yahoo.co.uk and one or two other Yahoo! domains. Every such message bears a Yahoo! DomainKeys signature... ›››

DNS / blogs / Apr 02, 2008 4:44 PM PST

Trust in Email Begins with Authentication

As most CAUCE supporters already know, forging 'From:' or other commonly seen email headers is trivially easy. It's one of the most frustrating oversights in the creation of Internet email technology -- though of course that's only obvious in hindsight; it was just fine for the pre-Internet networks of the late 1970s and early-mid 1980s. Since then, things have changed -- and the most interesting recent technological advancements in email have been in the realm of sender authentication, which encompasses ways to verify that the apparent sender of a message actually is the entity which sent it. ›››

DNS / news / Apr 01, 2008 11:37 AM PST

15 Years Ago Joel Furr Referred to Unsolicited Bulk Messages as ‘Spam’

Spam continues to blight email exactly 15 years after the term was first coined and almost 30 years since the first spam message was sent. The term is thought to have been coined by Joel Furr, an administrator on the net discussion system Usenet, to refer to unsolicited bulk messages. Mr Furr first used the term to refer to bulk postings on discussion boards on the internet but in the years to come spam became associated with email. Today, more than 90% of all email is spam, according to anti-spam body Spamhaus. ›››

DNS / blogs / Mar 26, 2008 8:17 PM PST

A Third, More Interesting Round in E360 vs. Comcast

In the past week, Comcast filed an answer, denying all of E360's charges, and attached to it a motion to file a most impressive counterclaim. The court granted the motion on Monday so the counterclaim has been filed. At about the same time, E360 filed its response to Comcast's previous motion to dismiss the suit due to its utter lack of legal merit. ›››

DNS / blogs / Mar 20, 2008 9:03 AM PST

More on the Soloway Case

I've now read Soloway's plea agreement. Despite some claims from his lawyers that it's some kind of victory that he only pleaded to three of the 40 charges, with the rest being dismissed, it's clear from the agreement that he indeed did just about everything that the government charged. The government as is usual had several similar charges in each category. ›››

DNS / blogs / Mar 18, 2008 2:13 PM PST

A Flurry of CAN-SPAM Activity: Is It Meaningful?

Our four-year old oft maligned anti-spam legislation in this country, the CAN-SPAM act, has seen an uptick of activity this past week. Melinda Krueger sums up the sentiments of many in the anti-spam community in her Email Insider column today when she says, "there is no provision in the act against sending unsolicited email as long as you comply with the rest of the act. The motivation of the act was more to make voters feel politicians were doing something about this annoying problem." ›››

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Industry Updates

DNS / May 06, 2008 12:16 PM PST

Oversee.net’s DomainSponsor Presents 3rd Annual DOMAINfest Global

The third annual DOMAINfest Global, the premier conference and networking event for the domain name industry, will be held at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Hollywood, California from January 28-30, 2009. Event registration will open later this year. ›››

DNS / May 02, 2008 12:21 PM PST

.NL Auction Sneak Peak!

Join Sedo for our much anticipated .NL auction, being held from May 2nd 4pm (EST) until May 9th at approximately 4pm (EST). As the worth of the .NL continues to increase, so does the demand. ›››

DNS / Apr 30, 2008 12:01 PM PST

dotMobi Requests Proposals for find.mobi

dotMobi today announced that is accepting proposals for find.mobi, a consumer-facing mobile search tool; find.mobi was created by dotMobi's research and development team to demonstrate an operational mobile search engine that made the most of the mobile web and needs of on-the-go users. ›››

DNS / Apr 28, 2008 4:08 PM PST

dotMobi Offers Prime Selection of Generic Domain Names to Spur Mobile Web Growth

As part of its ongoing series of unique methods of allocating Internet domain names, dotMobi is bringing 16 "premium names" to market at Moniker's T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East Auction on May 23, 2008. ›››

DNS / Apr 28, 2008 1:41 PM PST

Sedo’s Better-than-Ever Brokerage Service!

Sedo's brokerage services are being updated with a new process for submitting both buyer and seller side brokerage requests and enhanced communications tools.  ›››

DNS / Apr 18, 2008 11:50 AM PST

Sedo’s Matt Bentley a Featured Speaker at Internet World Conference

Direct Navigation a key theme at this year's conference. Sedo, the leading online market place for buying and selling Internet domain names and websites, will be a featured presenter at this year's Internet World conference. ›››

DNS / Apr 16, 2008 8:00 AM PST

dotMobi Joins Forces with DomainsBot to Help Businesses More Easily Find New .mobi Internet Addresse

DomainsBot, the leading domain name suggestion and search engine company, will now include .mobi in their domain name search and suggestion tool, used by the majority of the world's best-known Internet domain name retailers. ›››

DNS / Apr 10, 2008 10:45 AM PST

.NU and .SH Auctions Start Today! Join Sedo for Side by Side Auctions

Both auctions will start at 11AM CET on April 10th and end approximately one week later at 11AM CET on April 17th. ›››

DNS / Apr 08, 2008 9:02 AM PST

Oversee.net Names David Subar Chief Technology Officer

David Subar will be responsible for building and implementing technology that supports Oversee's core activities in its Domain Services and Marketing Services divisions, while aligning the Company's technology resources for further expansion. ›››

DNS / Apr 07, 2008 8:51 PM PST

Sedo Introduces New Customer Support Center

With almost a 180,000 customers across the US and Canada, this online Customer Support Center will enable our members to benefit from faster turnaround times and more accurate responses. ›››

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