One-Third of World Spam

With the arrest of Oleg Nikolaenko, the young Russian responsible for billions of spam messages each day, the world is wondering what it would be like with one-third less spam.

There are over 250 billion email messages sent each day. With 86,400 seconds in a day, that's about 3 million email messages a second. Conservatively, 80% is spam. That means that 2.5 million emails each second are spam. Many of those emails are caught by spam filters, but the spam that makes it to inboxes still cause major problems. Spam is profitable and despite the repeated warnings, people still click on spam.

Ordering pharmaceuticals or fake Rolex watches from spam hurts you in two ways. First, they take your money for the item and you get an empty box if you get anything at all. And second, you can be highjacked and become part of the botnet. A botnet is like the Borg for computers. Your computer is taken over and does what it is commanded to do - send more spam!

Botnets sound like science-fiction, but they do exist and have attacked millions of computers. Most infections occur on home or small business computers and start with a computer that does not have an adequate firewall or anti-malware protection. At one time, Oleg's Mega-D botnet had over a hundred thousand infected computers sending billions of spam messages each day.

So will the world see a reduction in spam? Probably not, but it does give pleasure to all the haters-of-spam that at least one culprit is behind bars. For now, he's being held without bail. I don't know if Federal prisons still serve Spam, but he could develop a new found love for fried Spam, Spam sandwiches and Spam with eggs.

For more technical notes and information go to: www.lansystems.com/technotes.html.

What Hackers Want

Especially after someone has been the victim of a hacking attack, they want to know why. Hackers have many motives and trying to decipher their behavior is complicated. The classification of white hats, black hats, grey hats and such is an interesting attempt to legitimatize electronic spying and sabotage. Perhaps there are "good hackers" that perform a valuable service, but most attacks are malicious in nature. Generally, hackers want to take something from you, teach you a lesson or show their programming skills.

Taking something from you. This can be financial information, social media login and password, your time or your peace of mind. Many victims of infections that cause pop-ups with objectionable material are traumatized. They often react like the victim of a physical crime. Anyone that has been hit with difficult to remove malware knows that it can be time consuming and expensive to remove the infection.

Teaching you a lesson. Hacking may have started as practical jokes that exploited vulnerabilities for pleasure and recognition, but it has grown into an industry that steals billions of dollars of productivity each year. The pranks of today can cause great harm, intended or not. A recent Twitter Prank illustrated how disruptive it can be to “play around” on the Internet. Some may find justification for causing disruption in that they are just exposing vulnerabilities, but it is harmful and illegal. Malware is vandalism.

The best defense is a good offense. Implement appropriate protections for your electronics. Computer or cyber security takes many of its strategies from the physical world. You use locks for your house and car. You may have an alarm system, but the amount of protection is related to the value of the property. For instance, Fort Knox has fences and armed guards that protect the fortress. You should use the same strategy to protect your computer systems - the more valuable the information, the more you should invest in protection.

Vulnerabilities, Threats and Consequences (VTC). Determine the assets to protect and then analyze the vulnerabilities, threats and consequences. Just like with your physical property, use your assessment of the risk to determine the protection. Start with a review of your firewall and make sure you have a good backup of your system. Backups are an essential part of a disaster recovery plan and are especially economical if you ever have to restore. Also, use a malware protector in addition to your spam and virus protection. You may want to double-up on the malware protection. For many companies, enterprise level protection is essential. Protection includes content filtering in addition to the essential spam, virus, spyware, adware and ransomware protection.

It is difficult to stay ahead of the hackers. There are so many of them and they spend a great deal of time working on the next attack. Certainly, if that effort was put to positive use, we would be on the way to solving world hunger. But meanwhile, use practical computer measures to protect yourself, your company and your family.

If you have suggestions or comments, please contact me at: mary@lansystems.com.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday

This year just about every retailer is using the term Black Friday and Cyber Monday to advertise their special “specials” and grab the attention of holiday shoppers. Those seem strange terms, not very glamorous or even illustrative of a bargain. In fact, they sound more like viruses and cyborg attacks out of a sci-fi movie. So why have they caught on?

Used to describe sinister or catastrophic events occurring on a particular day of the week, Black Friday has been used for everything from massacres to meltdowns. Today, we most often use the term for shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Coined in the late 1960s by the Philadelphia police because of the choking traffic and crowds, the moniker caught on and by the mid-1970s was being widely used. Later the term Black Friday was redefined to mean the day that retailers become profitable or put some black ink on the ledger. It is an urban legend that Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. Actually the Saturday before Christmas handily wins as the top shopping day fueled by procrastinators and bargain hunters alike. But Black Friday has risen as a contender most likely because of all the hype and ads promoting the day.

Cyber Monday invented by shop.org (that’s a dead give-a-way) as the Monday after Black Friday where all the returning workers shop online for the bargains they missed over the weekend. This does have negative connotations in that people are spending otherwise productive time shopping at work and that they don’t have the ability to shop at home. Both of these facts are probably widely exaggerated especially with Cyber Sunday overtaking Cyber Monday as the biggest online shopping day. But there is no doubt that online shopping is deeply rooted in our shopping psyche especially if free shipping applies.

We all love a bargain especially as we go into the holiday shopping season. Our habits as consumers are researched, analyzed and baked into marketing strategies that grab even the most resistant shopper. Successful marketing campaigns are the stuff of legend giving the next generation of business school graduates an idea to admire and study for years to come. Whether highly orchestrated or completely accidental, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are here to stay at least for a while.

But it’s not bad to see consumers spend money. It could help our anemic economy and put us all in a festive mood. Early indications say there might even be a 3% increase over last year’s holiday sales. So shop in earnest, virtually and physically, but always beware of deals that are too good to be true!

For more technical notes and information go to: www.lansystems.com/technotes.html