Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Former AOL employee Jason Smathers sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for selling customers’ email details to spammers. Former AOL employee Jason Smathers has been sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for selling customers’ email details to spammers. The 25-year-old former software engineer pleaded guilty in February to stealing at least 92 million screen names from AOL’s…

CA becomes latest AV firm to join name game with the announcement of its new division First there was Kaspersky Lab and ICSA Labs, then came along MessageLabs and SophosLabs. Now CA has become the latest AV firm to join the party with the announcement of its new division ‘dedicated to promoting and performing advanced…

For the second year running, research presented at the annual Crypto conference raised concerns over the security of commonly-used hash functions. For the second year running, research presented at the annual Crypto conference has raised concern over the security of commonly-used hash functions. The encryption field was thrown into a frenzy in August 2004 when…

Andrew Lee shares his highlights of the Black Hat Briefings USA In the midsummer heat of the Nevada desert, close to two thousand people donned their sunscreen and their coolest ‘geek wear’ and congregated for the annual Black Hat Briefings. It was my first time at one of these events, and so, like a newbie…

Court approves AhnLab’s spyware classification The Southern District Court of Seoul ruled this week that AhnLab’s detection and labelling as spyware of the product of software company Digital Names is justified. The court rejected a petition filed by Digital Names to stop the distribution of AnhLab’s anti-spyware product SpyZero, ruling that the spyware label was…

New hoax email comes to light after the launch in the UK of a campaign involving personal emergency contact numbers It has been a long while since VB reported on any virus hoaxes, but last month saw a new hoax email come to light after the launch in the UK of a campaign involving personal…

310 people arrested in Malaga after an operation involving the FBI, the US Postal Service and the Spanish police. Authorities in Malaga, Spain, must be congratulated on a bumper crop of arrests in connection with 419 scamming. A total of 310 people were arrested in an operation involving the FBI, the US Postal Service and…

Scott Richter, aka the ‘Spam King’, is no longer classed as a spammer according to Spamhaus’s authoritative Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) Scott Richter, aka the ‘Spam King’, is no longer classed as a spammer according to Spamhaus’s authoritative Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO). The man who brought to our inboxes such ‘unbeatable’…

CA hops on the bandwaggon Computer Associates is the latest AV company to announce that has acquired an anti-spam firm. CA purchased privately-held anti-spam firm Qurb for an undisclosed cash sum. CA has already been using Qurb ‘s technology – which is based on whitelisting senders by analysing existing messages in the user’s mailbox –…

Police investigate murder of Russian spammer The Times Online reports that one of Russia’s most infamous spammers has been found dead in his apartment. The body of 35-year-old Vardan Kushnir, who had spent years spamming users with advertisements for his American Language Centre, was found by police earlier this week, having apparently been beaten to…