Image Blocking in Email Clients and Web Services

Handy graphs and best practices on the state of default remote image loading in desktop and online email clients -- a problematic issue from a security point of view, and a marketing heaven from an advertising perspective :

"Every client has its own default settings regarding displaying/hiding images. And while most email clients have a setting to turn images on or off, some offer conditional settings which are contingent upon known senders or other factors. The following table outlines the default settings of popular desktop- and webmail-clients."

Sometimes a spam email isn't sent with the idea to trick someone believe into something, but to act as a verification of that email's existence in the form of remote image -- web bug -- loading, and yes it could also act as a redirector to pretty much anything malicious. Go through related posts in case you're interested, and also see a common trade-off image spammers face.

Korean Zombies Behind the Root Servers Attack

More details on the recent DDoS attacks on the DNS root servers emerge, seems like the attacks originated from Sourth Korean infected PCs, but were orchestrated from a host server in Coburn, Germany :

"Citing data from the North American Network Operators' Group, the Korean government confirmed 61 percent of the problematic data was traced to South Korea. Yet, the Ministry of Information and Communication flatly rebuffs the suspicion that Korea was the main culprit behind the cyber attacks. ``We learned a host server in Coburg, Germany ordered a flurry of Korean computers to stage DOS assaults on the root servers,'' said Lee Doo-won, a director at the ministry. ``In other words, Korean computers affected by viruses made raids into the root servers as instructed by the German host server. Many of our computers acted like zombies,'' Lee said."

In a spoofable IPv4 Internet packet's authenticity is the most common flaw exploited on the front lines. The article points out that 61% of the problematic data came from South Korea, and it would be logical to conclude the other 39% came from Chinese and U.S based infected PCs, and while we can argue which country has the largest proportion of insecure end users -- or insecure end users with access to huge bandwidth -- that shouldn't be the point, but how ISPs should start considering how to stop the malicious traffic going out of their networks, compared to their current mindset of outside-to-inside network protection.

A battle lost for the botnet masters in their futile attempt to shut down three of the root servers, and a battle won for South Korea as they will definitely take this wake up call seriously. Meanwhile, S. Korea's CERT offers lots of interesting research reports on the local situation, particularly their latest Internet Incident Trend Report.

Graph courtesy of the ANA Spoofer Project.

The Phishing Ecosystem

Phishing is the efficient case of online social engineering. With the ease of sending phishing emails thanks to malware infected PCs -- spamonomics 101 -- as well as many other techniques for creating the pages and forwarders phishers use to trick users -- it's indisputable how much more profitable phishing is next to spam.

This is perhaps the most detailed summary of the emerging ecosystem I've read in a while. It walks the reader through the process of acquiring the resources for the attack and tracking down the results and provides overview of how malware authors, phishers and spammers work hand to hand due to the pressure put on their actions by the industry and, of course, the countless third-party researchers. Here's a summary :

"- Get an email list
- Develop the attack
- Locate sites to send phishing emails from
- Locate sites to host the phishing site
- Launch the attack
- Collect results"

Around the industry, security researchers are again signalling the ongoing use of popular sites such as MySpace for hosting phishing pages, phishers are going Web 2.0 and starting to use Google Maps, and seems like Castle Cops the anti-phishing community witnessed a demonstration of DDoS bandwidth power which is definitely the result of the consolidated anti-phishing initiative that they manage to keep on expanding. Moreover, yet another evidence of the developing ecosystem is the fact that spam and defaced sites aren't what they used to be, namely are turning into malicious attack vectors. Despite that everyone's claiming the commercialization of this entire ecosystem, hacktivism is not dead!

The "best" is yet to come, and let's hope a more suspicious common sense on the users' part too.

Cuba's Internet Dictatorship

And you thought people in China suffer from the lack of free speech expression. Here's the cheap version of the great firewall of China, this time in Cuba :

"Cuba built an Internet search engine that allows users to trawl through speeches by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other government sites, but does not browse Web pages outside the island. Cubans cannot buy computers and Internet access is limited to state employees, academics and foreigners. Cubans line up for hours to send e-mails on post office terminals that cannot surf the World Wide Web. Passwords are sold on the black market allowing shared Internet use for limited hours, usually at night."

With Fidel Castro now seriously ill, the speeches will sooner or later turn into historical ones, the question is, which think-tank across the world would come closer in its predictions of the situation in a post-Castro Cuba next to reality? On the other hand the U.S is starving Cuba's bandwidth hunger to death, and considering their inability to invest in alternative sources for connectivity, the extend of degrading the quality of their Internet connectivity is almost unbeliavable as :

"Cuba is forced to use a costly satellite channel with only 65 megabytes per second (mbps) for upload and 124 mbps for download, he said."

Even a France Telecom customer that has upgraded service to Fiber@Home will be able to ping-to-death Cuba's entire academic community. And while Cuba recently blamed the CIA for digital espionage, it would take them unnecessary amount of time to download sensitive material remotely given Cuba's bandwidth capacity. Several other interesting events in case you remember were when Kyrgyzstan got cut off from Internet by hacker attack, and when Zimbabwe's Internet was shut down because they forgot the pay their bill. Bandwidth matters, depending on the perspective of course.

The most recent report on Censorship in Cuba is also worth going through :

"To visit websites or check their e-mail, Cubans have to use public access points such as Internet cafes, universities and “Youth computing centers” where it is easier to monitor their activity. Then, the Cuban police has installed software on all computers in Internet cafes and big hotels that triggers an alert message when “subversive” key-words are noticed."

The only way to undermine censorship is to talk about it -- and mock it.

Profiling Sergey Brin

Great weekend reading :

"Stepping through the sliding glass door into their office is like walking into a playroom for tech-savvy adults. A row of sleek flat-screen monitors lining one wall displays critical information: email, calendars, documents and, naturally, the Google search engine. Assorted green plants and an air purifier keep the oxygen flowing, while medicine balls provide appropriately kinetic seating. Upstairs, a private mezzanine with Astroturf carpeting and an electric massage chair afford Sergey and Larry a comfortable perch from which to entertain visitors and survey the carnival of innovation going on below. And there is ample space for walking around, which is absolutely essential for Sergey, who just can’t seem to sit still."

A story that proves for yet another time that nothing's impossible, the impossible just takes a little while. Here are some photos from Google's NYC headquarters, guess who likes to spoil its employees -- sorry Googlers -- most from all the tech companies these days? Say Google again!

Beyond Traditional Advertising Packages

Differentiate your value proposition or cease to exist. And hey, that's on Madison Avenue :

"As a startup carrier that hadn't yet hired a pilot, Virgin needed more than just slogans and 30-second commercials. That's about when Anomaly, a two-year-old startup, brought a pitch that sounded more like a takeover bid: Carl Johnson, Anomaly's 48-year-old co-founder, hauled out plans to design the interiors of Virgin's new A320s, fashion the flight attendants' uniforms, and create the content for a pay-per-view seat-back entertainment system."

You may also find the best and worst Super Bowl -- the U.S ad industry's favorite playground -- ads entertaining. Meanwhile, Pepsi is anticipating the DIY marketing culture and is asking everyone to help them build their next billboard on Times Square. When advertising does its job millions of people keep theirs, isn't it?