Over the past few days I've received an unusual amount of German neo-Nazi spam, some apparantly forged from one of my home addresses. My ISP had suggested a local virus infection (unlikely, since I don't use The Gaping Security Hole Known As Outlook) - but finally I have an explanation: a "perfect storm" of spam...
Tools for democracy
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- Reading the Maps
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- The Apocrypha of Noah
- The Progress Report
Overseas
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9 comments:
I've not seen any spam - Telecom's Brightmail filtering seems to be coping well with any floods. I've never heard of a local virus causing you to get excessive spam - sounds like your ISP's help staff have an arse-elbow confusion issue...
Incidentally, Outlook 2003 (as patched) is pretty much best practice for security, given that you want to be able to read attachments and HTML email. It knows about most hazardous attachment types, blocks image display, etc. But don't let me interpose facts into the need to slag off MSFT, eh!
Posted by Rich : 5/18/2005 12:09:00 PM
I/S- Do you mean on your personal email or on your comments section?
Tumeke has posted on a fascist attack on the punkas website here.
It is called "hackzkrieg."
You may have been targeted deliberately by NF types who don't like your politics. As many bloggers have anonymous-enabled comments sections and are NF (who isn't?) they may be targeted. To avoid any potential problems this comment is anonymous.
Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2005 03:35:00 PM
That should be anti-NF!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2005 03:37:00 PM
No, it's email that's the problem. Nasty stuff about guest workers and immigration, with pointers to the websites of various German far-right parties.
Posted by stephen : 5/18/2005 04:53:00 PM
Ahhhh, thanks for clearing that up, I/S. I got truckloads of that stuff, so it's clearly not just a New Zealand thing either.
Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2005 09:15:00 PM
I've found another article about this. They reckon it's part of a neo-Nazi campaign in the lead up to the state elections in North-Rhine Westphalia on Sunday. [Spiegel link (in English)].
Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2005 11:51:00 PM
Oh, *and* according the this article, you have nine days until the next round of Sober-ordered spam. I wonder what it'll be about? In the meantime, everyone, update your anit-virus software and run a system scan.
Posted by Anonymous : 5/18/2005 11:57:00 PM
Spamzkrieg!
Posted by Bomber : 5/19/2005 02:04:00 AM
I looked this virus up. As you might know, the more sophisticated viruses rely on bugs in computer systems to spread. This one relies on bugs in the user's brain - you have to unzip the file with the virus and run it to "infect" your machine....
BTW, things you should have on your machine:
- Some sort of anti-spam - if you are on Xtra their free service is Brightmail based and very good.
- Anti-virus - AVG/Free is as good as anything else and *free*
- Windows update enabled
- A personal firewall. If you run XP the built in firewall is pretty effective
- Anti-spyware
- And remove admin rights from your user account. (This is the one thing I don't do as it's a pain for installing programs, but if you run a fairly stable system its a good idea. Longhorn will probably make you do this!)
If you do all that, you will be pretty much sweet. You can even open dodgy attachments safe in the knowledge that your safety nets will (mostly) catch you!!
Posted by Rich : 5/19/2005 09:59:00 AM
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