ESET Threat Blog

Did the spambots guess the answers to my questions? I think not. I tried the following two questions:
7/0=
Got Milk
 

In both cases the answer I specified as correct was
 

"quue792mcow9up4esbbrkjldjb,dzrrkjrenjl407niuvdopinejnvf DHOIVNN;LN;ND"
 

I’m pretty certain that the spambots did not have time to crack the question, so now it is time to find out how they are … Read More…

Blog spambots are programs that automatically post comments to blogs. They are basically stupid programs written by people whose own mothers would rather not acknowledge their existence. At any rate, they are a hassle for bloggers who allow comments. There are a variety of techniques to automatically delete the spam posts, but they have advantages … Read More…

Tragedy brings out the both the best and the worst in people. In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech sewer-dwelling vermin are registering and selling domain names related to Virginia Tech, but they aren’t the threats. The floaters these sewer-dwelling vermin are swimming with are the jerks trying to use social engineering to … Read More…

SETI@home (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/) and Folding@home (http://folding.stanford.edu/) are interesting, if not cool uses of technology, but they do bear a striking resemblance to a nefarious threat called a botnet. Now with Sony contemplating a commercial "PS3 Grid"  (http://blogs.pcworld.com/digitalworld/archives/2007/04/sony_looking_to.html) one wonders where the lines will blur.
There are similarities between a botnets, SETI, Folding@home. The term botnet is … Read More…

I received a question about the validity of a warning a friend received and thought it might be useful to share some information about spotting hoaxes. The text of the email is quoted in bold red below.
 
Key hoax indicators.
 
"PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS:"

The above sentence already puts this at 99.99% … Read More…

The “oh so scary” iPod virus is less proficient at spreading than the news around it. George Santayana was quite smart man. George was the guy who said “"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and the media has been repeating (as in retelling) history in reporting the “iPod virus”.
 
Modern day … Read More…

Kurt Wismer is “a long time member of the anti-virus community”, a very knowledgeable computer scientist, and all around good guy. Bad guys don’t post things like links to movies of infrared pictures of farts now, do they? http://place-guid-here.blogspot.com/2007/01/have-you-ever-wondered.html.
 
I posted a link to a web site, noticed that there was a typo, fixed the typo, … Read More…