Month: October 2008

Halloween winners

Our contest winners for this year’s Halloween:

1st place went to Kara Kritzer in marketing:

Kara

2nd place went to Kendra Wallace (marketing) and Alanna Rubin (accounting) as dead dolls:

Kendra1231231

Alanna1231123

3rd place went Matthew Pratser (tech support) as the purple hippopotamus:

Matthew1231398813

4th place was tied – Amanda Dunphy (accounting) as a vampire and Eric Hanna (tech support) as Fatman not Batman.

Amanda12312312

Eric123138

Well done to the winners.

Alex Eckelberry

Let’s stop capitalizing “trojan”

If you write about malware, how many times a day do see something like this?

Trojan12398810

There’s absolutely no sound grammatical reason to consider the word “trojan”, in the context of malware, a proper noun.

This capitalization came from the original long-form, Trojan horse, which become shortened to “trojan”.

Spell checkers aren’t wrong to recommend capitalizing the word, since it very well could be a reference to a citizen of Troy (a Trojan), the Trojan horse, or even the USC Trojans. But I see no technical reason to capitalize the word itself in the context of malware, since it’s clearly a common noun.

One would capitalize Trojan when using the compound “Trojan horse” in the context of malware, given that this is the use of the original proper noun in an analogous context.

If you agree or think otherwise, comment!

Alex Eckelberry

EstDomains termination… stayed

Well, this is really frustrating. As DNW says it:

Domain registrar EstDomains might remain an accredited domain registrar after all.

Yesterday Domain Name Wire reported that EstDomains received a notice of termination from Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN cited the conviction of EstDomains’ president Vladimir Tsastsin for credit card fraud, money laundering and document forgery in February as the reason for the termination.

The company claims that Tsastsin resigned his position back in June, so the reasoning for ICANN’s termination is invalid. ICANN has issued a stay while it considers the matter. EstDomains will retain its accredited status during review.

More here.

You can see Estdomains’ request to ICANN here.

Alex Eckelberry

Murder of Stopzilla exec

A tragic story: Jessica (“Jess”) Kalish, an executive at IS3 (makers of the Stopzilla antispyware program) was found brutally murdered last Thursday. Police now allege that Carol Anne Burger, a Huffington Post writer from whom Jess was working through a divorce, killed her by stabbing her multiple times with a screwdriver (Burger has since committed suicide).

I first got to know Jess last December, when I blogged about the StopZilla toolbar’s use of Ask in its search results. She was a gracious, friendly, likeable person with a good sense of humor (and, endearingly, an appreciation of The Bard). Later, I met her in person in DC at the Antispyware Coalition meeting. Her equanimity and affable demeanor clearly brought value to her organization.

All of us here at Sunbelt extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends during this difficult and very sad time. I’m sure she will be missed by many.

Alex Eckelberry

A highly charged political blog entry

It’s the hip thing to do in tech these days:  Extoll the benefits of a candidate on your blog.

Well, I steer clear of politics on this blog. 

Except, there is one little thing: I live in Florida…

So, I’m going to play it safe and vote for both candidates!

See? Simple!

On another note, my father, God rest his soul, told me back in the 2004 election that what one of the parties needed was a jingle.

At the time, I thought it was rather quaint.  But having seen the incessant negative ads on both sides, I think of a kinder, gentler time — when all that really was required was a good jingle. So take some time this evening to take a look at a different time in our history of campaigns, at the LivingRoomCandidate.org.

See you on Tuesday.

Alex Eckelberry

Seen in the wild: Clever Bebo phish

You may receive a Bebo PM with something like this:

OMG TELL ME ITS NOT TRUE ABOUT YOU!
HEY DID YOU SEE WHAT THEY WROTE ABOUT YOU IN THEIR BLOG? LOL! TELL ME IT’S NOT TRUE. TAKE A LOOK AT AMYSBEBOBLOG. COM

Well, going to Amysbeboblog. com actually redirects to a Bebo phishing site.
Notice the domain, “beboq”.

Beboq1283881230900

Alex Eckelberry
(Credit to Johannes Betz for the tip)

Multiple Vendor Web Browser FTP Client Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability

Multiple vendors’ web browsers are prone a cross-site scripting vulnerability that arises because the software fails to handle specially crafted files served using the FTP protocol.

Successfully exploiting this issue may allow an attacker to execute arbitrary script code in the browser of an unsuspecting user in the context of an FTP session. This may allow the attacker to perform malicious actions in a user’s browser or redirect the user to a malicious site; other attacks are also possible.

Source

PS: Firefox 3.0.1 – 3.0.3 affected. Firefox 3.0.4 is in works.

Signing Off,
Michael St. Neitzel

SSH Scam sites update

Thanks to Patrick Jordan for the information.

Zlob Trojan Distributing site:
91.203.92.12 Bsplware. com
91.203.92.12 Softwmpdll. com

Scam Internet Security Page:
91.203.92.12 Safesurfingpage. com

404ErrorpageScam:
91.203.92.12 404mispage. com

Security Guide Scam Page:
91.203.92.11 Screenshortcuts. com

Ad-Server-Gate Pages:
91.203.92.12 Ghjyt. com
91.203.92.12 Bnmhg. com

Protection Center Scam Page:
91.203.92.11 Securesurface. com

Scam Security Toolbar site:
91.203.92.11 Selectedtoolbar. com

IE AntiSpywareStore site:
208.72.168.92 Onlyiesettings. com

Please stay clear of these sites.

Bharath M N