Global SPAM Volume Dropped Drastically Wednesday!

Shockingly, I’ve noticed a definite drop in spam today.  Surprisingly Teksquisite’s Outlook junk folder does not hold one spam message. Of course I am delighted - almost every morning there is a minimum of at least a dozen new spam messages in the Tek junk folder.  My personal Gmail account was also down in volume today and only contained 23 spam messages which is about 1/4 of the spam that it normally holds.  I’m impressed!

Allegedly, McColo.com, a Silicone Valley spam source was taken down on Tuesday.  MSNBC reports that immediately after McColo was unplugged that security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide.

“The servers are operated by McColo Corp., experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email.”

Sophos states that the company is alleged to have been hosting command-and-control (C&C) mechanisms for a number of large botnets, perhaps including Rustock, Srizbi, Dedler, Storm, Mega-D and Pushdo. When considered together these botnets are estimated to contain over 600,000 infected home computers capable of sending more than 100 billion spam emails per day, according to Wikipedia’s entry on botnets.

You can read the complete Sophos article here.

World expert on botnets, Gadi Evron, during his Pause For Reflection post on the linuxbox botnets list in October stated,  “Cyber crime is a war waged against the Western world. At first, no one even noticed and it was a niche.. an art. While the artists still exist, they are a minority, the hackers. For the criminals however, motive is as irrelevant as nationality. Whatever actions are taken, be it a political defacement, fraud or spam, the unavoidable secondary impact remains the same: damage to the Western economy and security in an exponential growth which will become ever clearer in the coming years.”

“Who is next on the target list?  I have dual citizenship. Along with my homeland citizenship, I am of the Internet, and see it as my personal duty to try and make the Internet safe.”

Stay Tuned!

Thousands hit in Massive Web hack

Kaspersky Lab reported on November 7 that malicious links were placed on as many as 10,000 web servers. News reports state that the attackers most likely used SQL injection (SQLi) or compromised accounts at these sites.  I’m guessing that they used SQLi!

“We’re estimating that in the last two days alone, between 2,000 and 10,000 servers, mainly Western European and American ones, have been hacked,” Kaspersky wrote on its website last Friday, “It’s not yet clear who’s doing this.”

Read about the attack at Computerworld

Even Dell Is Cutting Back In This Economy!

Dell offers unpaid time off, voluntary separation -PC maker faces recession pressures.

Dell recently had to put a short-term hold on new hires and plans are underway to reduce contractors.  Having subcontracted for Dell I would also advise Dell to not allow their techs to send out a motherboard with every laptop warranty called in.

My experience with servicing Dell contracts is that techs from India tend to send out a motherboard with almost every laptop error.  Whether this is to appease the customer or just motherboard overkill by Dell techs - I think a reduction in motherboards shipped would save Dell massive amounts of money in such a troubled econmy.

E-Mail Abuse

Teksquisite strongly believes that all E-mail service providers are responsible for stopping spam at the server.  We also realize that spoofing is not something an E-mail service provider can prevent.

When an E-mail service provider will not take responsibility for spammers or abusers who utilize their servers, somebody needs to make the rest of the internet community aware of the E-mail providers that refuse to protect legitimate customers.

During the next few months Teksquisite will be examing E-mail abuse and how various E-mail providers address these issues.

When it comes to email abuse MSN Hotmail takes reports of abuse seriously, investigates in a timely manner, and proactively shuts abusive accounts down within 48 hours.

Gmail does not respond to reports of abuse.  It appears that Gmail allows spammers and abusers to proliferate their servers at the expense of online safety.

~Stay Tuned!