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I.S. Sentry, Inc.
Information Systems Perimeter Security
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Spam Issues in the News

You've Got Far too Much Mail (systems management pipeline) 05/01/05
The Promise: E-mail archives will help companies master e-mail overload issues, comply with regulations and legal discoveries, and provide knowledge management. The goal is a unified message archive that stores not just e-mails, but IMs, voice mail, and other types of communications in one place.

The Players: AXS-One, C2C Systems, Connected, EMC, IBM, iLumin, Intradyn, Ixos (now Open Text), KVS (now Veritas), and Zantaz all have e-mail archive software. Many of these now offer support for IM, and some are being merged with records management tools. Newcomers include Sony, HP, and AthenaArchiver.

The Prospects: As prices trend downward, capabilities increase, and regulators tighten the screws on companies to make particular e-mails available to auditors and courts, e-mail archives will become more widely adopted. Voice mail may never make it into the common e-mail archive, but IMs are a good fit. Scalability will become an increasingly important consideration. [Click here for Full Story]

AOL Derails Emergency E-Mails as Spam (cNet) 05/04/05
Emergency managers in Indian River County, Florida hard-hit by hurricanes last year, thought the best way to get out weather alerts was by e-mail--until they learned that AOL was tagging the messages as spam.

"Because we send out mail in large numbers, it becomes a pattern for spam senders," said Basil Dancy, a county computer software engineer.

The problem started last year with frequent alerts during an unusually busy hurricane season when four major storms hit Florida, including two - Frances and Jeanne - that swept over Indian River County with winds above 100 mph. [Click here for Full Story]

MailFrontier Desktop (cNet) 05/01/05
At a glance Editors' rating: 8.0 Excellent

Average user rating: Be one of the first to rate this product!

The good: Excellent accuracy; minimal false positives; blocks foreign-language e-mail; easy to use; highly customizable.

The bad: Only e-mail tech support available; can't import address books after installation.

What's it for: No-muss, no-fuss spam filtering.

Who's it for: Individuals, enterprises, or anyone in between who needs painless spam filtering.

Business use: Keeps spam out of your employees' Outlook and Outlook Express Inboxes.

The bottom line: Move over, Norton AntiSpam. MailFrontier Desktop is our pick for pain-free yet effective spam relief. [Click here for Full Story]

Tip Sheet: How to Protect Against a Zero-Hour Attack (smallbiz pipeline) 04/15/05
Here are six good ideas for keeping your computer systems safe from viruses and worms. By Rob McCarthy Courtesy of TechLearning

In the last year, a series of viruses and worms that caused damage across the Internet in record time has made very clear how vulnerable our computer systems are. The MS Blaster, Slammer, Sasser, and Korgo.W worms have shown that signature-based antivirus software and traditional firewalls are not enough to protect networks. Everyone is worried about a zero-hour attack — an attack based on a previously unknown vulnerability and completely immune to antivirus software. What can you do to protect your network from such an event? Here are a few ideas: Use file integrity checking. [Click here for Full Story]

Multiple Versions of Bagle Trojan Swamp Antivirus Defenses (smallbiz pipeline) 03/01/05
A major wave of Bagle-like Trojan horses hit users worldwide Tuesday with numerous variations that aim to overwhelm anti-virus defenses by morphing faster than research labs can release new signatures.

The attack, which began about midnight EST, was launched in a large-scale spamming campaign, said virus researchers, and although the new threat doesn't spread on its own -- these are Trojans with Bagle characteristics, not true worms -- many security vendors have bumped up warnings to get out the word.

It's unclear how many variations are at loose. Some vendors, such as Symantec, had reported only two as of mid-morning Tuesday. Others, such as the U.K.-based Sophos, said there were at least four or five distinct versions. According to Reston, Va.-based iDefense, some sources are reporting as many as 15 copy-cats.

"Wave attacks are becoming increasingly common," said Ken Dunham, iDefense's director of malicious code research, in an e-mail to TechWeb. "Multiple minor variants are rapidly seeded into the wild to help the overall success of the attack." [Click here for Website]

3Com Introducing Anti-Spam, E-Mail Security Appliance for SMBs (Microsoft) 02/04/05
3Com's planned anti-spam and e-mail security appliance for small and medium-sized businesses follows a similar appliance from Symantec last week.

3Com plans on Monday to announce an anti-spam and e-mail security appliance for small and medium-sized businesses. The announcement follows launch of a similar appliance from Symantec last week. But the 3Com technology is designed for even smaller companies than Symantec's.

The 3Com E-Mail Firewall, to be available late this month, will be priced starting at $2,800 for up to 100 users. By comparison, the Symantec Mail Security 8200 series, due to ship at about the same time, is priced at $1,995 for 100 to 1,000 users. Barracuda also offers a low-end e-mail security. [Click here for Website]

Spam Costs Businesses Billions (smallbiz pipeline) 02/03/05
The cost of spam in terms of lost productivity has reached $21.58 billion annually, according to the 2004 National Technology Readiness Survey.

The annual survey, conducted by Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business and Rockbridge Associates, a technology research firm, reveals that Internet users in the United States spend an average of three minutes deleting spam each day they use E-mail. Multiplied across 169.4 million online adults in the United States, this comes to 22.9 million hours a week, or $21.58 billion based on an average wage.

"The business community needs to realize that a lot of its money is going down the drain," says Roland Rust, director of the Center for Excellence in Service. "This is a problem that concerns everyone."

The survey indicates that 78% of online adults receive spam daily and 11% receive at least 40 such messages. Of those, 14% read spam they receive. Four percent of online adults said in the past year they purchased a product or service advertised in spam--that's almost 7 million people propping up peddlers of herbal Viagra and the like. [Click here for Website]

Fed-Up Texas AG Sues One of the World's Largest Spammers (Microsoft) 01/13/05
The Texas attorney general on Thursday sued one of the world's largest spam operations, saying that Texans were "fed up" with the massive flow of illegal e-mail.

The federal complaint filed in Houston by Attorney General Greg Abbot names Ryan Samuel Pitylak, a University of Texas at Austin student, and Mark Stephen Trotter of California as controlling three spam-sending companies registered in Nevada. The companies are PayPerAction LLC, Leadplex LLC and Leadplex Inc.

The watchdog group SpamHaus.org ranks the defendants as the fourth largest illegal spam operation in the world, according to Abbott.  [Click here for Website]

Security Software: Downloads and Trials (Microsoft) 01/13/05
Download antivirus software, firewalls, spyware removal tools, and more to improve the security of your computer and to help keep it running smoothly. From Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Get better protection against viruses, hackers, and worms. This service pack includes Windows Firewall, Pop-up Blocker for Internet Explorer, and the Windows Security Center. Microsoft Windows Antispyware (Beta) Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (Beta)

Download our new anti-spyware software to help protect your PC from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. MSN Toolbar MSN Toolbar

Block pop-up ads with Pop-up Guard. Help prevent pop-up windows from appearing while you browse the Web (works with Windows 98 and later). [Click here for Website]

Reviews: POPFile Update, Spamnix 3.0 (smallbiz pipeline) 01/10/05
Let's fight sp@m! Columnist Scot Finnie still loves POPFile for its accuracy and flexibility, but the user interface and bugs are starting to annoy him. And, for Eudora users only: Spamnix is vastly improved.

If you're still having issues with spam, and your New Year's Resolution is to finally do something about it, you owe it to yourself to try the free, open-source, proxy-server-based POPFile utility by John Graham-Cumming. I reviewed POPFile favorably last fall. After about 4.5 months of usage and 120,000 messages processed, POPFile is running at 99.22% for me. That's pretty fantastic.

Interesting statistics: Of those 120,000 messages, 83% were spam. (Note: I have all ISP/server-based spam controls disabled from my various mail hosts.) POPFile has generated 100 false positives (messages incorrectly identified as spam, but less than half of those false positives were messages I cared about. Probably fewer than 20 were mission critical to me. And most of the false positives came in the early going. [Click here for Full Story]

Tip of the Week: January 5, 2005 (Microsoft) 01/05/05
Battle Spammers with Outlook

Here’s a relatively new spam technique you might not have seen before. The spammer sends an e-mail message to an alias and requests that a “read receipt” be sent when the user deletes the spam from his or her inbox. The receipt is being sent to a valid e-mail account. Using default settings, Outlook users never see this receipt being sent, so you’ll never know that you’ve just validated your e-mail address to a spammer.

I suggest that you do the following:

1. On the Tools menu of Outlook, click Options.

2. On the Preferences tab, click E-mail Options.

3. Click Tracking Options.

4. Click “Ask me before sending a response.”