Got my first Mimail-L virus email this morning. The social engineering is excellent. The header looks credible, the subject and address line plausible and the email itself is readable, literate and, while pornographic, a compelling storyline. It also got past my Bayesian spam filter which is unusual. My conclusion: this could be a nasty … Read more
Watch out for Mimail.L. During 1st and 2nd December 2003, MessageLabs has intercepted a number of copies of a further variant of the Mimail email worm – W32/Mimail.L. Here’s what to watch out for: The worm arrives as an attachment to an email with the subject line Re[2]. The emails arrive from spoofed addresses, … Read more
If anyone has been hit by the recent wave of ‘brand-spoofing’ spam or viruses — particularly those that appear to be from a bank, or from Paypal or eBay — could they please drop me a line? I’m very interested in following up on some of these cases for a future column. Reach me here. … Read more
Microsoft’s Bill Gates has announced new junk e-mail filtering technology called SmartScreen. AP reports the technology will use algorithms to judge whether incoming e-mail messages qualify as junk e-mail and filter them out before they get to the end user’s e-mailbox. More interesting, Gates demonstrated Microsoft Research’s Stuff I’ve Seen project, which is developing … Read more
If you start receiving weird messages on your Bluetooth-enabled phone (or, I guess, a PDA) from strangers, you’ve probably been Bluejacked. For more, read here. Nice. Although of course it’s open to abuse so expect the vulnerability to be exploited by spammers, hackers and the marketing fraternity.