Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Teen admits to distributing Blaster variant. Minnesota teenager Jeffrey Lee Parson has pleaded guilty to distributing the B variant of the Blaster worm . Parson admitted to a Seattle court that he had created the B variant of Blaster by modifying the original MS Blaster worm. The 19-year-old will be sentenced on 12 November 2004…

Prosecutions made in Denmark, USA and India. The new year saw a flurry of reports of spammers being brought to justice, with prosecutions being made in Denmark, the USA and India. A Danish businessman was convicted last month (January) of having sent more than 10,000 unsolicited emails. In Denmark the practice of sending unsolicited emails…

Latest Mydoom variant causes problems for Google. A new version of the Mydoom worm , Mydoom.O, has been spreading across the Internet by email, causing problems even for the Internet’s largest search engines. The Register reported yesterday (when the worm first appeared in the wild) that a mini denial of service attack had been triggered…

Magold author sentenced, Finnish Lasku author arrested. Last month saw the sentencing of a Hungarian teenager to two years’ probation for creating the Magold virus . Teenager ‘László K.’ was convicted of unauthorized use of computer systems. Although the teen was sentenced to one year in a juvenile prison, Veszprem City Court commuted the sentence…

Spam King agrees to settlement with NY State. High-profile email marketer Scott Richter, aka the ‘Spam King’, has agreed to pay $40,000 in settlement of a lawsuit brought against him by the State of New York – a mere drop in the ocean compared to the $20 million judgement NY State has initially sought. Richter,…

Despite there currently being no US laws regarding SMS spam. With Microsoft achieving a $4 million court victory against spammer Daniel Khoshnood and his company Pointcom Inc., and the New York State reaching a rather less impressive $40,000 settlement in its case against Scott Richter, aka the ‘Spam King’, July was a fruitful month for…

Emerald Isle lures another AV firm. McAfee Inc. ( formerly known as Network Associates ) has announced plans to move its European headquarters from Amsterdam to the Republic of Ireland. The company said it would move its European headquarters to Dublin or Cork in 2005, giving it the advantage of Ireland’s lower tax regime (Irish…

Latest proof-of-concept virus affects Pocket PC. Back in August 2001, Virus Bulletin carried an article which warned ” be prepared for the first Windows CE worms for Pocket PCs “. Nearly three years later the first virus to affect Pocket PCs has appeared: WCE/Duts. Duts is a proof-of-concept virus written by the 29a virus-writing group,…

Spammer ordered to pay $4 million damages to Microsoft. A Californian man has been ordered to pay $4 million to Microsoft after he was found guilty of having sent unsolicited email to users of the corporation’s MSN and Hotmail services. A federal judge found that Daniel Khoshnood and his company Pointcom Inc. had used deceptive…

Profits more than doubled since last year. Symantec has announced record profits for its fiscal first quarter of 2005. The AV company reported a profit of $131m on sales of $577m – profit having more than doubled since the same quarter last year. Symantec chiefs said some of the company’s success could be attributed to…