Warning: New Virus -- Lavigne

Here we go again -- YAV or "Yet Another Virus".  This was emailed to me -- I did confirm it all -- so I don't have a link (sorry -- couldn't find one via Yahoo's Dow Jones even though they sent it out):

Ms. Lavigne, a 17-year-old "skater-punk" pop star, joins a growing list of celebrities, most notably tennis beauty Anna Kournakova, who have served as virus writers' bait.

Variously Called "Naith," "Avril" and "Lirva" by different antivirus companies, the virus spreads via e-mail, live-chat systems IRC and ICQ, music- file sharing on KaZaA and network file sharing systems, according to antivirus software maker Symantec Corp. (NasdaqNM:SYMC - News) , which Tuesday labeled the virus low risk.

By e-mail, the virus travels via messages with a number of different subject lines and attachment file names. Among the subject lines seen is "Fw: Avril Lavigne -- the best," but others, such as "Fwd: Re: Admission procedure," are less easy to spot.

While I didn't see a write up of this on the Symantec site, Sophos has done their normal excellent analysis and points this out:

The worm terminates anti-virus products and drops several copies of itself onto the hard disk with random names.

...

The worm can send cached passwords to a Russian email address.

W32/Avril-A spreads by sending itself to email addresses gathered from DBX, MBX, WAB, HTML, EML, HTM, TBB, SHTML, NCH and IDX files, stored in <Windows>listrecp.dll.

...

It is not necessary for a user to double-click on the attachment to become infected as this worm can exploit a security vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Outlook and Outlook Express.  [_Go_]

Thanks to Guy K. Haas for making me aware of this.

4:32:12 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

From the Anti-Apple or "Is it Better than Getting Laid?"

Now here's an interesting perspective on Apple's new computer:

You know, I gotta hand it to Steve Jobs. He's the only one who can make a six-point-eight-pound $3300 laptop seem like it's better than getting laid. Any wonders why Apple has only 3% of the market share? On the PC side of the fence there are more powerful laptops (with USB 2.0 ports, even) for about $2000. Hey, some people call it getting laid, others call it... [_Go_]

And there's another post in the same vein as well.  I wasn't there so I'm reserving judgement but Scoble has an interesting point.

9:43:38 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Spam Filtering's Last Stand !

I missed this when it first came out:

Paul Graham's A Plan for Spam starts right off in the first paragraph with the assertion If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no way they can get around that, and that's right where the whole plan falls down. The whole automated spam fighting community is built around the incorrect assumption that they are fighting spam... that all that has to be done is "recognize their messages" and the fight is done. But we're not fighting spam, we're fighting spammers, and over and over again the failure to recognize this has rendered one anti-spam technique after another obsolete as the human spammers adapt.

... (much good information about Bayesian filters and how they will increase spam)

To make this scientific, I offer a prediction: Less then one year after Bayes filters are widely deployed, they will no longer work, but the collateral damage to all of our inboxes due to improved spammers will be significant. To anybody who would disagree with this post, I offer to meet you one year after significant deployment (a day agreed on by us both), and evaluate how I did.[_Go_]

There are some really good points here and, since I'm going to next week's Spam Conference, I'll definitely keep them in mind. 

Bias: I run a company which makes anti-spam software, Inbox Buddy.  So I clearly have a vested economic interest in spam filtering.

9:09:30 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Spam the Game!

Too bad I don't play games but if I did, I would check this out:

So what better way to end the year than to point you towards a Web-based game where you earn points for destroying spam and cartoon spammers? Yes it's Spamwars, playing in a galaxy not so far away (the game is set in London) right now.  [_Go_]

8:49:59 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Sniff... Bye TurboPower -- But You Did the Right Thing

In another life, HyperWriter / NTERGAID, I was a TurboPower customer for years and years -- 1988 to 1996.  I probably still even have discs in my archive from them.  Now I see that TurboPower, a vendor of software components, is shutting down after 18 years in business.  No real mention on their website as to why they are shutting down -- just that they are.  But they are doing the right thing for their customer base with this -- they are Open Sourcing their components so developers can carry on without them:

“We’ve been a big part of the developer community for nearly 18 years,” said TurboPower President Gary Frerking. “Open sourcing our products seems like an appropriate gesture of appreciation to the community that supported us so well over the years. We sincerely hope these products take on a life of their own and continue to prosper for many years to come.”

TurboPower’s component libraries cover a wide spectrum of development needs including compression, serial communication, faxing, Internet communication, scheduling, data entry, encryption, and XML manipulation. There are nearly twenty commercial-quality libraries being considered for release, containing hundreds of components and thousands of classes and routines — over one million lines of source code in all! [_Go_] [_FAQ_]

Nicely done.  Bravo!  Found via SlashDot.

8:04:59 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Comments on MyPHPBlog

I've always been interested in MyPHPBlog, a PHP based, Open Source blogging tool but never really had the time to assess it.  Yesterday I was IM'ing with someone who uses it for his blog and passed on some comments. Here's the IM transaction:

fuzzygroup: How do you like MyPHPBlog ?
Torraca2: I like it now that it runs -- it isn't very neat on the inside.
fuzzygroup: lol.  A lot of php stuff isn't.
Torraca2: the way the includes work force a certain filesystem structure that bugs me (I had to use a redirect as my default page to get readers to ../blog/pt.php -- there was no other easy way around it)
Torraca2: on the other hand, it is light, free and not too bad to install.  I'll have to switch to something else eventually, but it works.
Torraca2: your 'temporary solution' maxium comes to mind tho...
fuzzygroup: lol.
fuzzygroup: Yup.  Better to get going and learn from it rather than put it off

Thanks Man!  This is great info for anyone what wants to takea  look at MyPHPBlog.  MyPHPBlog is accessible via SourceForge.  [_Go_]

Oh and if you want to see some really cool photos of gem stones then check out Torraca's blog.  [_Go_]

7:51:35 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Thanks Harry or Strategy Patterns Really Work

I know that we all see references to different things on blogs all the times where someone says "It's Cool" but then you always wonder "Does it Work?".  Well yesterday I put my $$$ where my mouth (typing) is and decided to find out.  A month or so ago I blogged about a PHP programming technique called "Strategy Patterns" for validating user input.  I took a quick look at the code (which was good) and looked at the author's reputation (which was good) and gave it a recommendation. [_Go_]

Yesterday I hit a point where I needed to code exactly that type of situation -- so I decided rather than yet another set of if statements, I'd try it out.  So I surfed over to the location above, the Go link, and copied the code into VI.  It just plain worked.  And that's really the highest praise I can give -- when code just plain works, that's awesome.  Then I found out that my model for usernames was a little different so I quickly hacked in a change to one of the regex's.  And that just plain worked.  And then I realized that any username must not only fit an existing format (say 6 characters, any alpha, number, . or @ but also needs to NOT exist int the database already -- I actually knew this but Harry's code didn't allow for it.  So I was able to add that in just a few minutes.  And, best of all, it was neater and more elegant than the way I would have handled it.

So I have to say "Thanks Harry" -- Harry Fueckes is the cool guy who wrote this and it was much appreciated.  Nice Job!  You can bet that I'll be visiting PHP Patterns more often.  He has more recently added a piece about Data Access which looks quite good.  [_Go_]

7:36:05 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This