Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Web giant plans hunt for hidden spam gold. ISP mammoth AOL has obtained a court judgement allowing it to dig up the land of a convicted spammer’s family, in a search for a stash of wealth they believe he has stowed away in the form of gold and platinum bars. The spammer was convicted last…

Film download service accused of using spyware strongarm tactics. Washington state has brought an action against a firm called Movieland.com , after complaints that the company’s free trial was accompanied by ‘spyware’ and pop-up software, which aggressively bombarded users with demands that they sign up for a paid service. The service claimed their software was…

Exploit worm stories continue to appear, but threat believed minor. Reports are proliferating across the Internet, warning of the dangers faced by users of older operating systems from worms exploiting the vulnerability patched by Microsoft ‘s MS06-040 release last week. At least two separate worms, variously named Cuebot , Wargbot , MocBot , and Graweg…

Consumer organisation makes over 5,000 ‘virus variants’ for AV product testing. ConsumerReports.org , a non-profit consumer website, has announced that it created 5,500 ‘new virus variants derived from six categories of known viruses’, for use in a comparative test of anti-virus products. The new malware was ‘unleashed’ in the testers’ lab to exercise heuristic detection…

65-year-old files 82 cases in two years. A retired Pittsburgh man has used a Pennsylvania state law, allowing spam victims $100 compensation for every spam received, to fight back against spammers bombarding his inbox. Since his crusade began in 2004, the man has filed 82 cases, five of which are currently awaiting trial, and is…

Microsoft’s AV storms to second in US sales charts. Heavily discounted Windows Live OneCare took over 15% of over-the-counter US sales of AV software last month, according to market watchers at NPD . Only Symantec sold more retail copies, and market share was lost by all major players; however, as a Symantec spokeperson pointed out,…

Security firm suffers security bug and incompatibility criticism. After announcing on Friday the discovery of a vulnerability in its Backup Exec software, Symantec suffered press criticism when the beta of its forthcoming Norton Confidential anti-phishing software was revealed to be incompatible with current versions of Norton AntiVirus , and other security software from the firm.…

State of Michigan accuses spam companies of corrupting minors. The Attorney General of Michigan state has announced plans to prosecute two US companies under anti-spam laws designed to protect children. Michigan’s Child Protection Registry Act requires anyone sending out mass emails to check a register of children’s addresses, and remove the details of anyone underage…

As Microsoft plugs security holes, hackers quickly take advantage. An exploit has been sighted using a vulnerability patched this week, as part of Microsoft ‘s ‘Patch Tuesday’ set of security updates. The monthly release covered a hefty number of problems, one of which, buffer overflow MS06-040 , has since been subject to exploitation, amid fears…

Mobile device proof-of-concept opens hole in network security. A proof-of-concept attack, which uses the BlackBerry mobile device to breach network security, was demonstrated at the DefCon conference in Las Vegas last week. The exploit uses the servers the devices connect to as a vector into networks. The researcher who developed the demonstation has not released…