Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Chinese reports of ‘major threat’ thought unlikely. Reports in the Chinese Shanghai Daily of a ‘five-star cyber worm’ which could be ‘one of the most devastating cyber worms ever to attack Chinese-language programs’ have been dismissed as hype by several security vendors. The original report, which refers to the virus as ‘worm.whboy’, quotes estimated infection…

US, Dutch and Japanese police crack down on online bad guys. Of a series of arrests and convictions this week, the most spectacular headlines centre on the potential 101-year sentence faced by a Californian credit-card phisher, convicted of breaching the US CAN-SPAM act. 45-year-old Jeffrey Goodin’s campaign of emails targeted AOL users, claiming to come…

Malware infestation alleged at root of porn conviction. A Connecticut teacher, recently convicted of morals offences after her laptop displayed a range of pornographic sites to a classroom of children, has been backed by several malware experts. The 40-year-old Julie Amero was found guilty by a court in Norwich, Connecticut, after an incident in 2004…

Spear-phishing awareness training and testing for staff. Personnel working for the US Coast Guard have been ordered to take phishing awareness training, while other US government agencies are putting their staffs’ phishing avoidance abilities to the test. In November, the US Department of Defense (DOD) mandated that all its personnel complete spear-phishing awareness training by…

Lawsuit won against UK spammer. Microsoft has won a lawsuit against a spammer based in the UK. Microsoft launched legal proceedings against 37-year-old Paul Martin McDonald after receiving numerous complaints from its Hotmail customers. McDonald’s company Bizads sold lists of email addresses of people it claimed had subscribed to receive information about business oportunities via…

Use of hidden DRM software costs company $5.75m. Sony BMG Music Entertainment ‘s ill-advised use of hidden digital rights management (DRM) software on its CDs in late 2005 has cost the company $5.75 million in settlement fees. Last month Sony agreed to pay a combined total of $1.5 million to settle lawsuits filed by the…

Buffer overflow vulnerability in MMS SMIL exploited. Last month saw the publication of proof-of-concept code exploiting a vulnerability in the popular mobile phone Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). Security researcher Collin Mulliner discovered the vulnerability over six months ago and reported it to software vendors, but having received no satisfactory response, chose to publish the exploit…

Court bars bulk email address sales site from further business. Microsoft has won a judgement against a UK man accused of selling lists of email addresses for the purpose of spamming. The man, Paul Martin MacDonald, ran a business called Bizads , which sold email addresses in bulk. Microsoft argued that the sale of these…

Worm spotted targeting 6-month-old vulnerability in AV products. An alert has been issued by eEye Digital Security researchers for a new worm, which they have called ‘Big Yellow’, exploiting a vulnerability in Symantec products detected and patched six months ago. The worm, which Symantec is calling W32.Sagevo , targets a flaw in the remote management…

Mails promising tax refund just another scam. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the UK taxation authority, has issued a warning regarding a phishing campaign using its name. The spammed scam uses the HMRC name and styling, and offers recipients a sizeable refund in their taxes. It goes on to say that the refund will…