Dancho Danchev's Blog - Open Call for Blog Contributors and Guest Bloggers

UPDATE: Do you know which is one of the World's most popular Security blogs and who's running it? 

Guess what - you've been reading it all along. Ever since I started this blog in December, 2005 for the purpose of impressing my girlfriend and greatly inspired by a successful venture with Astalavista Security Group circa 2003-2006 I've received over 5M page views courtesy of a loyal base of users to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude for keeping track of my research and following my comments - in real-time. The time has come to expand and eventually launch a new set of products and services including a possible Advertising Inventory - therefore I've decided to launch an Open Call for Blog Contributors including Guest Bloggers. Interested in writing at this blog? Feel free to approach me - dancho.danchev@hush.com

Dancho Danchev's Blog - Major Security Web Property Statistics:

Dear blog readers, friends, partners, colleagues, Security Industry friends and partners including U.S Intelligence Community and U.S and International Law Enforcement friends and partners - it's been a decade since I originally decided to launch this blog positioning it as a top Security and Threat Intelligence including Cybercrime Research Major Web Property attracting thousands of high-profile and loyal users throughout the decade to whom I owe a great deal of personal thanks and admiration for following me and supporting my research and personal opinion throughout the years including the active spreading of high-quality and never-published before OSINT analysis cybercrime and threat intelligence gathering type of technical analysis.

In the spirit of offering high-quality research and malicious and fraudulent campaign analysis including the expansion of my personal blog to include a diverse set of new areas including a possible Advertising Inventory to offer to selected and invite-only vendors and organizations - I've decided to make an Open Call for Blog Contributors and Guest Bloggers with the idea to keep the spirit of my 2008-2013 series of analysis where I was busy dominating the news with new attack vectors and attacks techniques including the profiling and tracking down of new malware and cybercrime groups.

Interested in writing at this blog? Do you have a lot to say in the area of cybercrime research and Threat Intelligence including Privacy Anonymity and malicious software including botnets? Keep reading.

Who's Welcome to Approach me?

• Academic Institutions looking for ways to properly promote their research and content by offering a selected individuals who'd be responsible for offering an in-depth never published before perspective on the Institution's cybercrime and malicious software research perspective
• Threat Intelligence Vendors looking for ways to approach a new set of loyal user base and to promote their research products and services by appointing a selected individual who would be interested in communicating Key Vendor findings on a daily basis
• Independent Freelancers looking to reach out to a loyal user base and receive the necessary expose in terms of having their article read by thousands of loyal and selected users on a daily basis
• Friends and Colleagues with whom I've worked in the past or with who I continue to work nowadays who might be interested in making a valuable contributing to this high-quality Web property publication

Interested in writing at this blog? Do you want to make a valuable contribution? Feel free to approach me dancho.danchev@hush.com and I'll get back to you with proper access as soon as possible.

Continue reading →

Bedtime Reading - Rome Inc.

If the Baby Business helped you envision the future, "Rome Inc - The Rise and Fall of the First Multinational Corporation" is going to help you perceive the past within today's corporate culture -- and Stanley Bing makes good points on every stage of the empire.

Basically, the book emphasizes on the "first multinational corporation" Rome, selling the ultimate product of its time - citizenship. Moreover, it goes in-depth into the concept of moguls and anti-moguls, and how their tensions indeed create an enterpreneurial and corporate culture in 120 A.D.

Every industry has moguls and anti-moguls, the behind the curtain disruptors at a specific stage. What are some of the characteristics of a mogul?

- Commision their PR
- Exercise power when feeling endangered -- elephants against the mice warfare
- Indirectly control the media that's "winning points" for quotations, and "credible" content
- Generally, tend to believe in being the Sun, when the universe tends to have so many dwarfs, and dimensions altogether
- Hide behind C-level positions
- Talk more than actually listen
- When they sneeze the whole industry gets cold

Certain societies, if not all, get obsessed with superficially creating heroes, so profesionally that at a certain point, the "hero" cannot deny any of the praises, but starts living with them and the load that comes altogether. Get hold of this masterpiece, you're gonna love it! Continue reading →

Covert Competitive Intelligence

Yet another agreement on alleged covert competitive intelligence, this time, "WestJet Airlines says it’s sorry that members of its management team covertly accessed a confidential Air Canada website, and has agreed pay $15.5 million. In a joint news release from the two carriers, WestJet said that in 2003-2004, members of their management team "engaged in an extensive practice of covertly accessing a password protected proprietary employee website maintained by Air Canada to download detailed and commercially sensitive information without authorization or consent from Air Canada."

It's worth noting that Air Canada was actually aware of the security event, knew when it happened, and managed to trace it back to their competitors. Today's competitive intelligence does include unethical information gathering whether in-house, or "outsourced" practices, as DDoS for hire still make the headlines, compared to the many other still undetected insider leakages years ago. It's also impressive how Dumpster diving still remains a serious threat -- so make sure you shred your secrets! Continue reading →

DIY Marketing Culture

Problem - big name advertising agencies, and self forgotten copywriters easily turn into an obstacle for a newly born startup, the way marketing researchers can easily base your entire service/product development efforts on a single survey's results. Generating content, thinking content is the king, trying to sense and understand your customers' needs or where the market is heading to for the sake of responding with profitable propositions, I think is a self-centered, in-the-box mode of thinking that would cease to exist with customers becoming more informed.



Solution - Don't get too "product-concept" centered, instead solve a problem profitably and retain their satisfaction for as long as possible. Let your customers dictate the rules, and perhaps even generate your entire marketing promotional efforts themselves -- literally. Did you know you could get yourself custom printed MM's? I recently found out I can, and I'm already expecting the packs.



Or how the successfully positioned as a secure alternative to IE, FireFox browser actually invested pennies in spreading the word about it? Moreover, a $5000 bounty can indeed promote creativity, given they are comfortable with the idea, and with the 280 user-generated ads generated at FireFox Flicks I think they did it again, no wait, their users did it. Take your time to go through the flicks, it's worthwhile.



Question the concepts, rethink them, and disrupt with whatever the outcome. Continue reading →

The Practical Complexities of Adware Advertising

A report released by the The Center for Democracy and Technology yesterday, "How Advertising Dollars Encourage Nuisance and Harmful Adware and What Can be Done to Reverse the Trend", outlines the practical complexities of Adware Advertising. It gives a great overview of the parties involved, discusses a case study "CDT egages the advertisers", as well as outlines a possible solution, namely Adoption and Enforcement of Advertising Placement Policies. Here's a excerpt from the research findings :



"At this point, CDT has set a low bar by merely asking a small group of companies to contact us to discuss their advertising policies in the context of nuisance and harmful adware. We are working to increase awareness of the complex business models associated with nuisance and harmful adware, and we are pointing advertisers to policies and criteria that already exist as a step towards creating and enforcing their own policies. It is also imperative that advertising networks engage in self-regulation in order to aid in this endeavor. Initiatives such as the TRUSTe Trusted Download Program can help to set certification standards and provide public criteria for evaluating adware makers. Advertisers must demand strict compliance from their affiliates and refuse to work with blind networks and other networks that cannot commit to following stringent advertising policies. Without advertising dollars, there would be no nuisance or harmful adware. CDT is committed to working with advertisers to stem the tide of this nefarious form of software."



Now, if major advertising platforms start measuring the maliciousness of the Web, namely evaluate the participants' condition on a regular basis, they will loose the scale necessary for generating the billions of dollars necessary to, sort of, live with click-fraud. In respect to future online advertising trends, I feel that cost per performance/action model, would sooner or later emerge, given the successful collective bargaining of all the sites participating -- I really hope so!



How it would influence Google's ability to perform financially, contribute to the growth of Web 2.0, being among the few companies born in, is yet another topic to speculate on. As a matter of fact, Google recently launched Google Finance, still I miss what's all the buzz all about as compared to Yahoo's Finance Google still has a lot of job to do, given they actually want to turn and position themselves as Yahoo! 2.0 in respect to turning into a Internet Portal -- which I doubt as they tend to be rather productive while disrupting.



Great report, so consider going through it. And, in case you're interested in learning more about the different spyware/adware legislations, current and future trends, you can also check Ben Edelman's and Eric Goldman's outstanding research on the topic.



The post recently appeared at Net-Security.org - "The practical complexities of adware advertising"



More resources can also be found at :

Spyware/Adware Podcasts
Top 10 Anti Spyware Apps reviewed
Clean and Infected File Sharing Programs



Technorati tags :
Security, Spyware, Adware, Advertising, Center for Democracy and Technology Continue reading →