Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

Ministry of Defence reveals Lovgate found a weakness in its defences According to Computer Weekly the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) has revealed that, last year, it spent £10m on clearing up after a virus infection. The MOD believes that the Lovgate worm was introduced onto its systems by a user inserting an infected floppy…

No ‘Spam King’ clothing line for Richter. Infamous spammer Scott Richter, aka the ‘Spam King’, has fallen at the first hurdle in his bid to launch a ‘Spam King’-branded clothing line . According to Newsday.com , Richter has revealed that, shortly after he began to market his Spam King range of clothes – which was…

Chicago businessman takes matters into his own hands Chicago businessman Rocky Mosele has created his own ‘do not spam’ list. Fed up of the disruptive effect spam was having on his own business, Rocky consulted with attorneys and software engineers to come up with www.ethicalemail.com – a website on which visitors can register their email…

Suspect not a teenager for a change. A Taiwanese engineer has been arrested on suspicion of creating a Trojan horse. Earlier this week, 30-year-old Wang Ping-an was apprehended by Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) computer crime investigators, who allege that he created the ‘Peep’ Trojan. Wang is the first person to be indicted under Taiwan’s revised…

New Zealand government moves toward anti-spam legislation The government of New Zealand has signalled its intention to bring in anti-spam legislation. A discussion paper released by the Economic Development Ministry last month seeks to discuss and obtain feedback on various policy issues. For example, the paper seeks suggestions on how spam should be defined, whether…

Government email systems overwhelmed Barely a month after Germany’s ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) put forward proposals for tough new sanctions for spammers, the German government has found its email systems overwhelmed with spam. In late May a barrage of over half a million spam messages inundated the government’s email systems, although it was not…

Straight talking spammer A prolific emailer (read spammer) has told the US Senate Commerce Committee that, although the 30 million email messages he sends out each day comply with legislation (they all contain his contact details and an opt-out facility), he is prepared to deploy devious tactics if his messages continue to be blocked by…

Anti-spam company to become AV vendor’s latest purchase Just days after revealing that its gateway anti-virus product will stop sending automatic virus notification ‘spam’ – a practice that inspires indignation and frustration among computer users (see VB June 2004 p.9), Symantec has announced that it is to acquire anti-spam and email filtering company Brightmail. The…

Arrest of suspected Sasser author, arrest of suspected Phatbot author and questioning of five more suspects – all within the space of 7 days. The German authorities have been busy this month, having made the arrests of suspected Sasser and Netsky author Sven Jaschan and of the suspected Phatbot author last week, and this week…

Trend buys back shares, Sybari prepares to sell Trend Micro’s board of directors has announced plans to repurchase some of the company’s shares from the market. The company will repurchase a maximum of one million of its common shares through the Tokyo Stock Exchange. In a similar move last year the company repurchased 179,000 of…