Josh Wieder

Its been quite some time since I've received a 419 spam message in my inbox. But - like matter itself - 419 never dies - only changes form. I found the message below in my inbox this morning. I was pleased to note that the message originated from Yahoo, and contained several classic red flags for spam that even the neophyte mail server admin knows to watch out for, like from & reply-to headers with different different domains. This is the kind of l33t security I've come to expect from Yahoo. But hey, the Russians did it , and no one can be expected to secure their customers from state sponsored attacks. Susan here is no doubt a member of Nigeria's elite NIA . From: Susan ***** desmondwilliams614 yahoo.com Subject: Hello, Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2017 12:12:52 +0000 (UTC) Reply-To: desmondwilliams614 yahoo.com Susan ***** deswill0119 yahoo.fr Hello, Greetings. With warm heart I offer my friendship and greetings, and I hope that this mail will meets you in good time. Ho...

I am a victim of my nostalgia. Yesterday, I revived a years-old post in which I provided bloggees with some of the latest Windows activation keys to update the data for Windows 10. I figured I might as well dredge up another bit I had let fall by the wayside; Weekly links ! Exciting, I know.    - Yahoo's ad network and Microsoft Azure's web hosting service were abused to circulate an enormous flood of malicious software . Malwarebytes is being credited with the discovery - which is a little amusing because Malwarebytes has for had their own issues with security   for many years. h/t Washington Post     - Planned Parenthood and a variety of other related organizations were brought offline by a sustained series of DDoS attacks .  In what may or may not have been the work of the same group of individuals, someone has claimed they have hacked Planned Parenthood and retrieved an employee list database of some kind or another .      AFAIK, t...

What really irks me about this is that I deliberately use gigantic, stupid MTAs like gmail and live mail to deliberately avoid this sort of garbage (deliberately). Those familiar with administrating large volume email can appreciate that you can perfectly configure your mail server and end up bounding all over the place because almost everyone with a mail server is not an actual email administrator and has no clue what they are doing. Email, like high school, is ultimately all about popularity . Even the least competent of email server owners will eventually get tech support to make sure google and microsoft can deliver to and receive from their Zimbra abomination. At least that's what I figured until I started getting bounces like the one below. It seems Microsoft has decided that Security Focus mailing lists are too dangerous. To step up the oddity of this policy, bounces only occur when the originating MTA is with Yahoo. I can receive email directly from securityfocus.com. I c...

In a shameless  maneuver  to keep the traffic coming, I will be adding a new semi-recurring column to Tech Info. Called the C Note, this column will consist of missives from executives of technology companies in the tone of C. This will not be an 'Inside the Actor's Studio' for the ultra-rich, nor will it be an exposé where something is 'Occupied' . Attention will be paid to real articles of interest: identification of industry trends, justification for controversial decisions, in short, musings upon experience worth repeating. Do you find this distasteful, thrilling, a waste of time or something you would like the site to focus on more? Leave a comment or send an email or text message! Reproduced in entirety due to linking trouble with the in-appropriately-named-at-this-moment LinkedIn What I got wrong in the Peanut Butter Manifesto Brad Garlinghouse In 2006, as an executive at Yahoo! I wrote an internal memo outlining my observations about the state o...