Messaging News - October 2008 - (Page 8)

S H O R T TAKES Virginia Court Overturns Anti-Spam Law Last month the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the state’s anti-spam law, saying the statute violated the First Amendment right to free and anonymous speech. Also tossed was the 2004 conviction of large-scale spammer Jeremy Jaynes, on the grounds of First Amendment overbreadth. Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE) president John Levine commented, “For everyone except Jeremy Jaynes, this decision has little or no effect. Jaynes was tried for things he did in 2003, before CAN SPAM came into effect, and even his lawyer has said that if he did them now, CAN SPAM would catch him. I can’t say I’m thrilled that Jaynes got off (after three years of house arrest), and less thrilled if he gets to keep the $20 million (USD) he reportedly made from spamming fake FedEx refund kits and the like, but it’s not the end of the world.” Convicts Allowed Email According to The Bismarck Tribune, North Dakota’s corrections department is setting up an electronic mail system for inmates this fall, to provide what officials hope will be a cheaper and less troublesome option for keeping in touch. Pat Branson, deputy warden at the main state penitentiary in Bismarck, said the prisoners would only be able to write to people who are on an approved list. Electronic mail messages sent to inmates will be printed on paper and delivered to them. The inmates then will use the paper to write or type a reply, which will be scanned and sent to the recipient. “The system will not replace traditional mail and phone calls, and it will not give prisoners access to the Internet,” Branson said. “Inmates don’t have computers, nor will they be getting computers,” he added. Bugs in Space A worm recently hitched a ride from Earth on a laptop. NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries declined to name the invader but described it as a “worm-like virus.” International Space Station (ISS) is a joint project of 15 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Russia and Japan. Each partner, says Humphries, maintains its own computer equipment according to a set of agreed-upon rules. This worm infected a Russian laptop used to run scientific experiments. Humphries says the worm posed no risk to the command and control systems of the ISS, though he declined to give specifics. Kidnap Hoax Graham Cluley of Sophos reports a large amount of malicious spam claiming that the recipient’s baby child had been kidnapped, and demanding a $50,000 USD ransom was distributed at the end of the summer. “Of course, if you were foolish to look at the ‘photos’ you would be opening up your Windows PC to a malware infection by the Troj/Resex-Fam Trojan horse, which then downloads further malicious software from the Internet,” says Cluley on his blog. “This should be a reminder to everyone—even if a trick seems disgusting and beyond belief, it’s not too low for a hacker to consider using. It’s all very depressing, but sadly not at all surprising.” Fake Friends Beware the invitation from Facebook to add a friend: recipients that open an attached image to take a look at their new friend instead may open the door for hackers to compromise their PC. According to Websense, the spammers include a zip attachment that purports to contain a picture in order to entice the recipient to double-click on it. The attached file is actually a Trojan horse. Another incident this summer was a picture of a court jester, sticking his tongue out at the infected user while a Trojan horse deployed. Or last month coming from a Facebook email account users were directed to a fake video page pretending to be YouTube and offering a “secret video”, which required a download to view. Social networking sites continue to be a favorite vector for malware and scams because receivers, more often than not, trust their “friends”. 8 MESSAGING NEWS OCTOBER 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Messaging News - October 2008

Messaging News - October 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Short Takes Targeting the Technology-Wise Customer The Insider Threat: The New Era of Disaster Recovery Making Collaboration Tools Pro-Knowledge Sharing Botnets Go Marching On Dissecting Email Forensics Next in Messaging News “On Message” with Ben Gross The World is Not the Center of the Universe, and Filters Don’t Stop Email Spam Making the Case Learn More

Messaging News - October 2008

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