Lotus Notes Spam

Tags: : Malware Spam

YouTube videos are safe, but not this malware spam!  Here is the latest way to get people to click on a link.  It looks like a YouTube video.  Those are "safe", so we can click on this right!  Wrong.  Look at the URL the link goes to, below.  It loads an EXE malware file.  It is pretty convincing.  The picture below is a snapshot.  The actual email has an animated GIF and is very realistic. I think a lot of people will click on it as it look harmless.




Allison spotted this in her Lotus Notes Junk Mail folder and reported this to me yesterday.  SpamSentinel caught it, but if someone fishes it out of the quarantine area, it could infect their PC and create one more zombie computer!

Posted by Frank Paolino At 9:44 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : Malware Spam

We are seeing millions of these emails containing a malware payload.  The subject is more "Headline News" spam, but all the messages contain the same zip file Georgia.zip which has one file inside, joined.exe, which they claim is a photo, (and somehow uses a photo icon in Windows), but of course it is more malware.  Here is a sample:



SpamSentinel caught this as an Unnamed Virus, meaning our anti-spam filters detected it as a zero-hour threat.  This is good because it is password protected to avoid traditional anti-virus detection.

Posted by Frank Paolino At 11:21 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (2) |      

Tags: : Canoeing Up Mount Monadnock

Well not exactly canoeing up the mountain, more like hiking up the mountain (which is 3,165 feet at its peak, a climb of about 1,800 vertical feet) with a canoe OVER your head.  

Who is the crazy Lotus Notes person who did this?   Our very own Dan Calkin, who manages our Lotus Notes software development.

I asked him the obvious question, "WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT"?  

"Well, back in 1997 I was hiking that mountain just about every weekend during the summer for almost 3 years in a row. My friends and I were joking around about what we could do to make the hikes more interesting or challenging. We finally settled on a canoe because it was absurd (no water at the top of the mountain) but do-able."



"As we were unloading the canoe in the parking lot of the Mt. Monadnock State Park Headquarters, one of the park rangers walking by stopped and asked us "where are you taking that canoe?" Carsten and Dan looked at each other, looked back at the park ranger and then said, in unison, "UP!" The ranger, much to his credit, didn't even blink. He merely asked us which university we were from."

Here is an action shot during the climb, negotiating a difficult section of the mountain:

"This picture was taken at one of the most difficult parts of the ascent up the White Dot Trail.  
Lovingly dubbed 'The Chute', this section of trail is smooth, steep, and has a ledge you have to hop up as well. Not very difficult at all for guys like us who are in reasonable shape and have some experience in rock-climbing. However, lugging a canoe up this stretch of trail requires a little more effort. Teamwork like this was half the fun of the trip."

Here is what he told some passers-by:
"The most frequently asked question people asked was "WHY?" After having given a serious explanation too many times to count, we started telling people silly things like "It's a new fraternity initiation rite", "We lost a bet with our girlfriends", "What do you mean, there's not a lake up there?!?!?"


Finally, at the top of the mountain, in what little water they could find.  That is Dan Calkin in the back. Notice that they did not forget the paddles, nor was safety forgotten, hence the life preservers.

"The ascent took somewhat over 3 hours to complete.  This seemed like an eternity compared to our usual non-canoe-carrying ascent time of about an hour."

Finally, Dan makes this last comment:
"I have hardly been back there in the last several years, but we did it one more time last year for the 10th year anniversary of our first trip. That canoe has been up the mountain 4 times now.    1997, 1998, 2002, 2007.  I think it has made its last trip."

To see the full adventures of the Canoe climbing Mount Monadnock, visit Dan's website here:
http://www.dcalkin.com/   and click on photo gallery.

Posted by Frank Paolino At 9:50 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (1) |      

Tags: : 10 More Free T-Shirts

Because the first 10 Notes Floats My Boat t-shirts are already gone, we are giving away 10 more in honor of Yellow Day.  


Just leave your email and we will contact you for your physical location.

Giveaway terms:  We will send the T-shirt anywhere in the world at our cost except where a customs duty is required to be paid.  One T-shirt per person.  We will email you for your physical address, so you do not have to post it on the site.

To the rest, you can get a screen saver or background here:
http://www.maysoft.com/web3.nsf/page/Notes-Floats-My_Boat

Posted by Frank Paolino At 2:13 PM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (12) |      

Tags: : Notes Floats My Boat T-shirts

Yellow Day is a great idea!  We have mother's day, birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, so why not a day celebrating the most important thing in our professional lives, Lotus Notes and Domino!



In trying to find an appropriate way to celebrate, we decided a giveaway would make the most sense.  So, the first 10 people who leave their email address can get one our Notes Floats My Boat T-shirts in bright Yellow!


To the rest, you can get a screen saver or background here:
http://www.maysoft.com/web3.nsf/page/Notes-Floats-My_Boat


Giveaway terms:  We will send the T-shirt anywhere in the world at our cost except where a customs duty is required to be paid.  One T-shirt per person.  We will email you for your physical address, so you do not have to post it on the site.

Posted by Frank Paolino At 10:50 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (11) |      

Tags: : Funny

IBM Granted "Paper-or-Plastic?" Patent
(from Slashdot )
"On Tuesday, IBM was granted US Patent No. 7,407,089 for storing a preference for paper or plastic grocery bags on customer cards and displaying a picture of said preference after a card is scanned. The invention, Big Blue explains, eliminates the 'unnecessary inconvenience for both the customer and the cashier' that results when 'Paper or Plastic?' must be asked. The patent claims also cover affixing a cute sticker of a paper or plastic bag to a customer card to indicate packaging preferences."  


Besides the obvious "how lazy have we gotten" response, my guess is this patent is a refinement for a point of sale system that IBM sells.

But it got me thinking of other "critical" life choices that I could patent myself ???

Debit or Credit?
 

---

Tall, Grande or Venti?
 

---

Window or Aisle Seat?
 

---

Regular or Supersize me?

---

Smoking or Non-smoking?

---

Do you want Ice?

---

Boxers or Briefs?

---

Now we just need to affix a card to our forehead to save time when we are asked these important life questions.


What questions would you patent?

Posted by Frank Paolino At 1:33 PM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (3) |      

Tags: : Headline Spam

Well, it got my attention, too.  It was in my Lotus Notes Junk Mail folder, but I couldn't resist looking at it.  It falls into the spam category "Headline Spam", all of it false, or playing on current news and events.  The spammers use sensational headlines to get the recipient to open the message. Interestingly, the IBM message had no connection to the subject, but had another unrelated headline. Maybe the spammer thinks that if one scare tactic headline does not get results, adding a second unrelated headline will? I did not bother clicking the link, as it was probably some Storm virus or other malware:


Here are some other samples from the SpamSentinel Quarantine.nsf

More financial headlines:
US stocks turmoil causes global meltdown
Olympics cancelled due to nuclear scare

War and terrorism scares:
Cambodia attacks Thailand in Asia war
FBI Watching Possible Terrorists on Facebook

Car Accidents
Obama hurt in car crash

Equal time for the republicans:
McCain diagnosed with skin cancer, surgery done

Don't forget the commander in chief:
Air force one crashes in Iraq

And this important politician (given her driving record, this would be opened a lot)
Lindsey Lohan died in car crash. Video.

Don't want to forget Ms. VP candidate:
Hillary Clinton hurt in car crash

whose email had again another unrelated headline spam:


For me, I am waiting to see the headline "Microsoft switches from Exchange to Lotus Notes for internal email".

Posted by Frank Paolino At 9:40 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (5) |      

Tags: : Flash Spam

A new spam tactic emerged earlier this week, that makes use of hyperlinks to Macromedia Flash files that automatically redirect to a spammer site.  In the initial outbreak, the spammer site was of the “Canadian Pharmacy” type, however the same tactic could be used for any type of spam, or even redirection to malware sites.

The Flash files themselves are hosted on legitimate image-hosting sites (in this outbreak Image Shack was used to host the files). This is one more way spammers experiment with bypassing traditional content-based filters, and it’s probably only a matter of time before similar messages will be used to distribute malware as well.

How: Spam messages containing hyperlinks to Macromedia Flash files (ending .swf). The Flash files contain a function called “getURL” which simply redirects the user to the spam site. The files themselves are hosted on a neutral third-party image-hosting site.

When: The first such messages were intercepted by SpamSentinel on Saturday, July 26, 5:09 GMT

How Much: The messages began in small quantities on Saturday, and by Monday, July 28, had become a massive outbreak. In the last 24 hour period, over 7,000 of these URLs have been created and distributed within millions of spam messages.

SpamSentinel, using CommTouch real-time spam signature checking technology, blocks unwanted email even when new spammer tactics emerge.  This technology is based on the fundamental nature of spam and malware, and its distribution en masse.

What will they think of next?

Posted by Frank Paolino At 12:05 PM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : Patents

Our partner in spam blocking, Cloudmark, has just received a patent on their Global Threat Network system. What an exciting announcement! For the last 5 years, we have been asserting that the Community Approach to Blocking Spam is the best way to beat the spammers. Although the spammers have made some counter attacks, the Cloudmark technology that we integrate into SpamSentinel consistently self-corrects and finds a way to block the spam. It first dealt with polymorphic spam, then random poetry inside the message, then images, then viruses, and on and on.

Here is a quote from Cloudmark:

"This patented technology, the Global Threat Network system, is the industry's first collaborative threat detection system. The Global Threat Network system consists of 600 million trusted reporting sources, including service provider abuse teams, systems administrators, honeypots and users, who report e-mail messages into the system in real-time. Corroborated feedback from these reporters enables Cloudmark to automatically block new spam, phishing and virus outbreaks within minutes of the original attack."

The Community Blocking idea started with one of the founders of Napster who said "What can I do with a million people, now that they cannot share music anymore"? He created a collaborative filter, working with Vipul's Razor, to let the community decide what is spam and what is good mail. Leon Rishniw, a colleague and VP of Engineering at Cloudmark, had this to say:

"The Global Threat Network is the first and largest trusted collaborative threat detection system in the world," said Rishniw. "This patented technology gives Cloudmark customers unmatched protection against emerging threats"

So, while we Lotus Notes users are going in for all things community in a big way, SpamSentinel has been utilizing a community approach for 5 years. Here is a t-shirt from Admin 2006, stating:
What can 10 Million People Do to make the World a better place? The other side says the answer: Stop Spam! And now that approach is patented!

Posted by Frank Paolino At 12:25 PM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (0) |      

Tags: : Celtics

I was invited to Nashawtuc Country Club by Ed Sasena to see the Bank of America Championship. I watched a lot of golf, and it happened that a Nashawtuc member and one of the owners of the Boston Celtics, Steve Pagliuca, managed to bring the 2008 World Champion Boston Celtics Trophy on Saturday, June 21.  I had a picture taken with the trophy.  There were lip marks on the basketball, but I abstained from kissing it.  Notice that I kept my water bottle cool with  the Notes Floats My Boat koozie!

Posted by Frank Paolino At 10:32 AM Location Boston | Permalink | Comments (0) |