Email

Study Finds Spammers Use P2P Harvesting to Spam Millions

A recent study conducted by Blue Security reports how Internet users can unknowingly expose their contacts' emails addresses to Spammers while sharing files, music, games and DVDs over Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. The study has uncovered hundreds of incidents where files containing email addresses were made accessible in P2P networks. more

2004: The Year That Promised Email Authentication

As the year comes to a close, it is important to reflect on what has been one of the major actions in the anti-spam arena this year: the quest for email authentication. With email often called the "killer app" of the Internet, it is important to reflect on any major changes proposed, or implemented that can affect that basic tool that many of us have become to rely on in our daily lives. And, while many of the debates involved myriads of specialized mailing lists, standards organizations, conferences and even some government agencies, it is important for the free and open source software (FOSS) community as well as the Internet community at large, to analyze and learn lessons from the events surrounding email authentication in 2004. more

A Political Analysis of SPF and Sender-ID

In my spare time when I'm not dealing with the world of e-mail, I'm a politician so now and then I put on my cynical political hat. At the FTC Authentication Summit one of the more striking disagreements was about the merits and flaws of SPF and Microsoft's Sender-ID. Some people thought they are wonderful and the sooner we all use them the better. Others thought they are deeply flawed and pose a serious risk of long-term damage to the reliability of e-mail. Why this disagreement over what one might naively think would be a technical question? more

Does CAN-SPAM Really Matter?

As a daily and enthusiastic reader of The New York Times, I was disappointed to read their February 1 article on CAN-SPAM entitled, "Law Barring Junk E-Mail Allows a Flood Instead" (subscription required). The theme of the article was, as the title suggests, that enacting CAN-SPAM was worse than having no laws at all. The article really missed the point on several fronts. more

Two Stage Filtering for IPv6 Electronic Mail

I'm a guest at the MAAWG conference in San Francisco this week and several people have now mentioned to me the problem and the opportunity of anti-spam e-mail filtering for IPv6. Tomorrow is World IPv6 Day but since a bunch of the pieces have clicked together in my head I'll post this a day early. more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts for 2010

Looking back at 2010, here is the list of top ten most popular news, blogs, and industry news on CircleID in 2010 based on the overall readership of the posts (total views as of Jan 1, 2011). Congratulations to all the participants whose posts reached top readership and best wishes to the entire community for 2011. Happy New Year! more

Searching Under Lampposts with DKIM

Email is a complex service and email abuse adds confusing deceptions. Worse, like postal mail and even telephone service, Internet mail is inherently open, flexible and even anonymous, making things much easier for abusers. Bad actors hide their true identity and their true purpose. Most other communication tools for users also are also quite open, and problems with email are being replicated elsewhere, such as instant messaging and social media. more

Vendor Selection Matters in the Domain Registrar Ecosystem

Domain name abuse is one of the most dangerous and under-regulated issues in digital business security today. Many of the largest companies in the world still lack basic domain security protocols, making them prime targets for bad actors. An attack on a domain can lead to the redirection of a company's website, domain spoofing, domain and domain name system (DNS) hijacking attacks, phishing attacks, network breaches, and business email compromise (BEC). more

IDN and Email: The Harsh Reality

There has been a lot of talk about IDNs here and elsewhere but what does the reality look like for a plain user? As a test, I randomly choose 28 domains from Alexa's top 100 Sites and tried to create a user account with the email address user@??.com. The bleak result... more

The ENISA Botnet Report: Thoughts on the State of Play in Smart Phones

At the ENISA presentation on her botnet report at eco in Cologne, 9 and 10 March, one of the slots was dedicated to threats to the mobile environment. The message I was supposed to come home with was: we can still count the numbers of mobile viruses manually, <600; the problem will never be the same as on a fixed network as traffic is monitored and metered: We detect it straight away. We are studying the problem seriously. Are mobile operators really prepared for what is coming? more

Independence and Security Online Have Not Yet Been Won

As we, here in the United States celebrate our independence this Fourth of July, we are reminded that the liberties and freedoms that come with that independence have yet to be won online. As citizens of this country we are blessed with safety and security from threats both foreign and domestic, but those guarantees have not yet extended to our citizenship in the global Internet community. This is true not just for American citizens, but for all Internet users throughout the world. more

FBI Pushing Plans to Force Surveillance Backdoors on Social Networks, VoIP, and Email Providers

Declan McCullagh reporting in CNET: "The FBI is asking Internet companies not to oppose a controversial proposal that would require the firms, including Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. In meetings with industry representatives, the White House, and U.S. senators, senior FBI officials argue the dramatic shift in communication from the telephone system to the Internet has made it far more difficult for agents to wiretap Americans suspected of illegal activities..." more

Virginia Supreme Court Rejects First Amendment Challenge to Spam Statute

Thanks to Prof. Goldman I see that the Virginia Supreme Court issued its opinion in Jaynes, the state-law criminal spam case that has wound its way through the courts there. It affirms the conviction and rejects the various challenges to Virginia's spam statute... As a side note I should say that it's not often one is actually excited to read an order in a case you're not involved with. This is definitely one of those instances where the excitement is palpable... The news reports billed the case as the first felony conviction for sending spam. more

DNC Emails Hacked Using Fake Gmail Login Forms

A new report from SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit has revealed a hacking group operating from the Russian Federation, implemented spearphishing techniques involving use of look-alike Google login pages to gain access to DNC emails and other data. more

Happy Birthday, Internet!

Oh, Internet. You had such potential when you were born — darling of the research community, supported by the wealthiest military the world has ever known. And you married well, into a powerful merchant family. Why are you so lost? Is it a midlife crisis? You were born, some say, 40 years ago this week in a lab at UCLA — one of ARPA's many children. It wasn't until nearly two months later that you first spoke, transmitting the letters "L" and "O" before crashing... more