Michael Gracie

Paul McNamara, NetworkWorld’s news editor, had this to say about a public relations agency who spammed his crew.

Spamming tech saavy writers about anti-spam services? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that was one moronic move. But all it takes is a PR agency, aptly named Rocket Science (no link deserved), to pull it off.

Two Cal State Northridge students were caught hacking into a professor’s computer, changing grades, and ordering magazines, CDs, and pizzas under the professor’s name.

I’d say the pizza delivery bit is kind of ironic. I would have loved to have been the professor, getting all that free pizza (he wasn’t charged). I also suspect the students in question are going to see it that way, because their likeliest career option, post fines and jail, are going to be that of pizza delivery persons.

There is a piece of malware floating around that masquerades as a Firefox extension, but I’m not too worried.

The trojan, called FormSpy by McAfee, targets already infected computers (which means it probably has a great distribution base). But the extension it is trying to portray a plugin that allows users to navigate websites using keyboard numbers - that tells me its good for folks that don’t have a functioning mouse to do the same.

According to a study just released by email deliverability services provider ReturnPath, 97% of all IP addresses are worthy of being blocked. Under ReturnPath’s scoring methodology, less than one percent of emailers are worthy of a “most likely to get delivered” badge.

That whole “email losing clout” thing is starting to make sense. I doubt the fact that we are running out of IP addresses is helping matters either.

I dream of warm, clear, shallow water; bonefish tailing 50 feet from me in all directions. And a “no-tunnel” IPv6 connection in my bungalow.

It’s being called the “joint consumer internet security service”, but it sounds a lot like a distribution agreement to me. No matter.

Yahoo and Symantec will be co-branding Norton Internet Security tools, and offering them to Yahoo! subscribers at a pretty steep discount. The package will be wrapped around Yahoo! stuff like Mail, Toolbar, and Search.

Norton already updates subscriptions for a price, so I look at the provided discounts as a good thing. Cheaper protection for people less inclined to buy it on their own. The offering should also have a big impact on bug distribution, as Yahoo! has a ton of customers that may take them up on the offer. The more protected machines the better.

Fortunately, I think happy hour should be longer, even if it does have to start a little later.

According to yesterday’s report from E&Y and DJ’s VentureOne, venture capital investing hit its best quarter since the first of 2001. That’s great for startups. Unfortunately, the party doesn’t seem to be happening in my neighborhood.

You could provide the standard reasoning that local funds are more mature, and they are doing more follow-ons and portfolio consolidation right now. You could also go out on a limb by saying there is a “right brain drain” going on, so there are less ideas floating around. I don’t buy any of the notions, and I think the phenomena is actually a good thing.

First, less capital floating around means only the choice opportunities get funded, and the chance of success of any given deal should jump a notch or two. Getting more wins (and less fiascos) under the belt will attract additional capital over the long term. And it’s the “left brain” that usually keeps the books anyway.

Second, I suspect a big part of the local economy has been real estate driven, at least that’s my guess based on the impression that all people seem to want to talk about is their new houses, and all everyone seems to be doing is getting real estate licenses. Time to wake up there - the housing party looks like it is ending, and while it could actually get really ugly, at least that will prime a lot of people to get down to the business of creating value instead of waiting for someone or something to conjure it for them.

In summary, a little restriction of liquidity gets the juices flowing. We’ll see more bootstraps, more ideas popping up out of the woodwork (I love those kinds of surprises) - more ingenuity, and less waste. And that is really the entrepreneurial way.

Inexpensive hardware and software leads to quick time to market - on that there is no doubt. This, in turn, allows burgeoning new business ideas, and as Rich Karlgaard (and Glenn Reynolds) surmise, small business benefits the most. Big companies move slowly to the first investment, and they are still a bit scared of open source - they are more inclined to invest in proven opportunities. Chalk up another for small business, as solid models will get eaten up just as quickly as they launched.

Keep in mind that good business models require good ideas. Good ideas come from creative, intuitive minds that understand rigor. It is that resource that requires investment, and it is that resource that is slightly more dear.

I suspect we are going to see continuing business launches as a result, and a lot more failures as a percentage of the total. Only this time, the majority won’t lose their shirts in the process, and those that can bear the risks will move on to the next superior management team.

Nor find those ex-KGB agents.

Sophos just released it’s ‘dirty dozen’ spam relaying countries list, and the US still tops the charts.

Despite CAN-SPAM, which has produced arrests and fines, it seems it’s the average broadband connected internet user which is contributing to the lead. The culprit, botnets, and the puppet masters (according to Sophos), Russians.

I thought the Cold War was over.

It’s being called a “new kind of spam”, but it is nothing new.

Like the old adage “If a tree falls in the forest, but nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” - if spam isn’t caught because you don’t know how to detect it, it doesn’t mean that when you do learn how it becomes some “new kind of spam.”

The headline should have read “Anti-spam vendors figure out how to detect image spam - find it is a huge problem they never thought about before.”

***UPDATE***

Maybe Microsoft was keeping wraps on the image issue so they could look good - they had Outlook blocking them by default almost three years ago ;-).

Virus creators are using popular anti-virus packages as testbeds for their malware, meaning the most popular tools are going to be useless for immediate protection.

I think this is actually good news for the security sector, as it creates more competition grounded in innovation. If smaller, niche vendors can make it by proving they are a needed supplement to popular packages, they drive down prices. Virus authors still need to find ways to spread their creations, and the increased customization targeting an ever shrinking number of security holes is not going to solve that dilemma. Popular anti-virus products protect the broad base, which includes distribution exploits.

Let the little guy cover the back door. Meanwhile, we all win.