Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

The Virus Bulletin November issue is on its way. It’s that time of the month again… If you are a subscriber to Virus Bulletin, you should be receiving your November issue shortly – it’s on its way. As always, a selection of articles from this months issue have been posted up to the website and…

Fewer than five zombie network operators are responsible for all Internet phishing attacks worldwide according to CipherTrust… According to Commtouch Software the US, UK, Brazil and Romania led the world in sending phishing emails during September 2004. But Brazil may be able to be taken out of the equation for the time being, since Brazilian…

British man sets up his own Museum of Spam. Just in case you hadn’t already seen enough spam in your inbox, or in case your spam filter is so efficient that you find yourself missing the stuff, a British man has set up his own Museum of Spam. Stephen Newton considers spam to be ‘as…

Guidance issued on how to deal with rogue Internet diallers (‘porn diallers’) UK telecoms watchdog the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services (ICSTIS) has issued a leaflet for consumers which provides guidance on how to deal with rogue Internet diallers (‘porn diallers’). The guide explains how to detect the difference…

Spammers seize the opportunity to cash in on the US flu vaccine problem. Not only has the shortage of flu vaccine been something of a political hot potato in the run up to the US Presidential elections, but now spammers have seized the opportunity to cash in on the problem. Canadian email security firm Vircom…

Microsoft has another stab at getting its email authentication protocol approved. Microsoft has revised its Sender ID email authentication protocol and resubmitted it to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for approval. Sender ID was rejected by the IETF a little over a month ago, due to a possible intellectual rights conflict. The sticking point…

Sasser author made to wait. The trial of self-confessed virus writer Sven Jaschan has been postponed until next year. The 18-year-old, who confessed earlier this year to authoring the Sasser and Netsky.A viruses, will now stand trial in January 2005 – the earliest date upon which all those involved in the trial could agree. After…

Virus Bulletin RSS feeds revamped and live again. Although RSS feeds have been available from VB for some time, today we have revamped them and made them accessable to all. You will now notice a little orange ‘XML’ button in each news category. If you click on this button, you will be taken to an…

As if you haven’t already seen enough… A British man has set up his own Museum of Spam. Considering spam to be ‘as much a part of contemporary culture as just about anything you care to name’, Stephen Newton decided earlier this year to preserve for posterity some of the millions of spam messages that…

15 countries sign up to international action plan on spam. A total of 15 countries have signed up to the London Action Plan – an international action plan designed to encourage communication and cooperation between countries in tackling spam and spam-related problems. Those government bodies that have signed up to the plan have made commitments…