http://www.digitronix.com.auRSS feeds for DigiTronix PTY LTD60http://www.digitronix.com.au/Articles/tabid/763/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/13/When-SPAM-and-AntiVirus-doesnrsquot-work.aspx#Comments0http://www.digitronix.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=763&ModuleID=1129&ArticleID=13http://www.digitronix.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=13&PortalID=0&TabID=763http://www.digitronix.com.au/Articles/tabid/763/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/13/When-SPAM-and-AntiVirus-doesnrsquot-work.aspxBeing a consultant to the mining industry we often have to undertake additional training to remain certified and competent in all aspects of mining and mine safety.   Just this week I attended one such exercise over a two-day period and whilst the training itself was rigorous there were a few breaks to network and interact.   The trainer, a jovial 60-year old coal miner, was checking his email in-between the major breaks via his wireless broadband (although I doubt the 500mb limit would do him much good) and whilst he knew plenty about coal mining (he started when he was 15 in Scotland) one can only assume that he either couldn’t work the projector or didn’t care as his email was displayed on the classroom screen for all to see.   Whilst this is nothing new to see I did notice that just about every break that at least one or two SPAM messages came through.  With all of today’s technology and tools a our disposal I would expect maybe one or two a week – but this was more like 12 a day.   Now over the years one gets to learn the tray icons that run in the lower right hand corner of Windows and it struck me that the trainer was running “protection” software from an industry heavyweight in the anti-virus space.   But it wasn’t working.   And that’s the risk with this kind of software.  It started as an anti-virus software and when firewalls became the norm it adapted.  Then spam started to bug everyone and it adapted too.   But it’s core skill is still in fighting viruses.   So all the while this software is doing more, scanning more, anticipating more and preventing more and its CPU and memory is more.  Seriously I wonder who’s the virus here?!   And it was letting SPAM through.   This is the problem with this kind of software.  It depends on so many factors.  It depends on updating itself every day at some set interval.  It depends on your PC’s ability to hold the spam and anti-virus databases and it depends on your Internet connection –- far too much.   Consider this:  Before the anti-spam software can do it’s “magic” it has to download the email from your ISP or host.  At that point it’s too late.  You’ve already downloaded the spam and apart from eradicating the annoyance of reading it little else has been achieved.   If you use one of these “washer” programs and think you’re covered – think again.  SPAM has evolved beyond the basic check of email headers.   It’s astonishing too that some ISP’s consider that a variable accuracy open-source anti-spam and anti-virus solution is good enough solution for your email.     And so the vicious cycle begins.  The crowd that you fork-over money to decides that your money is only good enough for a mediocre anti-spam and anti-virus solution.  So you fork over more money to another crowd that decides in order to protect you as well as it can on a best-effort basis that it needs to chew up all of your PC’s resources.  To fix that you donate money to the coffers of PC manufacturers and so it goes on…   … and we’ve had enough of it …   … quite enough.   Whilst we do operate a hosting division within DigiTronix (namely DigiHost) it offers only business-grade hosting. And whilst we may use the same software offered at other hosting providers we install our copies on enterprise-grade servers of significantly higher quality and reliability than “entry-level” servers.   We install perimeter and core firewalls and re-enforce this with intrusion detection services – something overlooked by the cheap providers.   However there is one thing that we have done so differently that you may very well be surprised.   We’ve turned off all of our spam and anti-virus scanners.  That’s right. We’ve turned them off.    They don’t work.    The best we’ve ever achieved was around 86% spam reduction and this after two years of “training” the filter.  For the volume of mail we did it equated to around 120,000 spam messages slipping through every month – completely unacceptable.   Today we use a distributed cluster of “spam firewalls” as seen on the left manufacture by Barracuda Networks.   These appliances offer spam accuracy of 94% out of the box and with training creep as high as 99.4%.     Anti-virus, anti-spamming, anti-phishing, anti-spoofing and all the other anti’s are incorporated within this device.   Recently we have taken the decision to offer this excellent protection to customers outside of our network via our new jamspam service.   There is no software and nothing to install and or as little as 60c per email address per month you could have enterprise-grade protection.   For more information on this service please see http://www.jamspam.com.auDigiTronixFri, 06 Feb 2009 15:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:13http://www.digitronix.com.au/Articles/tabid/763/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/10/SPAM-can-take-your-life-away.aspx#Comments0http://www.digitronix.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=763&ModuleID=1129&ArticleID=10http://www.digitronix.com.au/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=10&PortalID=0&TabID=763http://www.digitronix.com.au/Articles/tabid/763/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/10/SPAM-can-take-your-life-away.aspxThere’s no doubting it.  SPAM is Internet cyber-crime at it’s best.  What’s worse is that it’s white-collar crime targeted at people just like you and me.   SPAM is a way for techno-savvy criminals to run their scams and cons with one purpose in mind: to part careless people from their money.  And there are so many careless people.  Statistically half the world has only a basic knowledge of email.  Coupled with thousands of newbie's entering the email world every day Spammers are not short of gullible victims.   Gullible victims that feel the urge to click “REMOVE” in email messages supposedly erroneously sent to them.  Every time they do this they validate their email address on a list of “People who responded” allowing the list of active addresses to be sold to other Spammers.  Spam is a business.  The more you click “REMOVE” the more Spam you will get.   YAHOO has been telling us this for years.  As a totally random exercise I created a new account at a free email provider.  Within four hours I received three Spam messages.  Clicking “REMOVE” on those messages brought another 15 within an hour – an increase of some 400%.  Burdening myself further I clicked “REMOVE” on eight of the 15 messages and signed-up to “free” offers on six of the advertised sites (although I doubt I will ever get my “free gift”).   It’s been four days and the email box is now at 423, no, 426 Spam messages.  So in just four days my Spam has increased 14,100%.   Every society in the world has its conmen, swindlers, cheats, thieves and petty criminals.  On the Internet they become Spammers, Crackers and Hackers and they all work together to form a nearly untraceable wide spread network of cyber-criminals.  Few of these criminals are ever caught and fewer still are prosecuted and with so many at large their gullible victims are in real trouble.   These cyber-criminals work hard at crafting their special scheme be it mortgage loans, credit loans, debt reduction, stock forecasts or whatever but their plan is clear.  What they are really after is your credit card number, hard-earned money and other personal data for their Identity-theft scheme.   It’s been confirmed too.  Identify-theft is the fastest growing crime in the world and a fair portion of it comes directly from responding to Spam.    Unfortunately the gullibility does not stop there.  Not all Spam comes directly from swindlers.  Some of it originates from real people thinking they’re working for a legitimate business selling their life insurance, health insurance or lending products.  These “sales persons” were themselves recruited by Spammers advertising via email or newspapers advertising those lucrative “work from home” jobs.  They don’t know it but they’re working for criminals.  Criminals sometimes operating from prison.   These are the total strangers who say “Here’s the information you requested” when you didn’t.  The strangers who just write to say “Hi” or the stranger who just so happens to have seen you and has a crush on you.   Users of Internet-banking, eBay, PayPal and Western Union are at a great risk too.  They receive messages identical in every way to that of the on-line service asking for registrant information or confirmation for one good reason or another.  The link they supply is the link of your on-line service but secretly in the background your information is being fed directly to the criminal’s cyber-headquarters.   These scams are given cute names like “spoofing” and “phishing” and completely belie the incredible danger that the victim is in.  Downplaying the danger yet alerting you to it is vital to on-line business.   Does it pay to Spam?  This article in TheRegister indicates that 80% of the Internet’s Spam originates from 200 professional gangs.  This report by research firm IDC predicts annual email volumes to be at around 97bn with more than half attributed to Spam.  Clearly with such large volumes of email a Spammer needs only a small percentage of respondents to be successful.   The moral of the story: Don’t click “REMOVE”.  Don’t respond to Spam and most certainly do not volunteer information of any nature because an email asked you to do so.   Our future articles will discuss anti-spam techniques and the best steps to take to protect yourself.DigiTronixThu, 15 Jan 2009 00:40:00 GMTf1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:10