Computer Tips -Tech Info

Tag: filter

  • Filtering out Ads with a Proxy using SafeSquid Proxy Server

    I just ran across this good how-to on replacing ads using a proxy server (in this case safesquid). A proxy server is a piece of software that requests web pages for other machines and then passes the pages along to the other computers. When the server requests a page it’s possible to make alterations and this is exactly what the how to details. In this case they construct a rule to identify ad blocks in the page (by the text that they use to call the ad from the adserver). After the block is identified it’s replaced with a custom bit of html.

    Good how-to and I wanted to make note of it for future reference.

  • Major botnet building and the massive jump in spam

    For a few months now (since the demise of bluefrog actually) I’ve noticed that the level of junk mail has gone up on my own mail server. Yes, I use spamassassin to filter and tag, but the volume of stuff that’s tagged has gone up (as well as the volume that slips through.) I’ve had to flush out the bayes filter more than I would like after some massive bayes poisoning attempts (those messages with lots of random words or text.) I’ve also been following news on the topic and thought I’d detail some of it here for those that haven’t been paying attention.

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  • Another Wolf in Sheeps Clothing to watch for “Spyheal”

    Sunbeltblog has the heads up on this one. Spyheal is the name it goes by and it hangs out at spyheal (dot) com

    So, if you’re in a position to block sites that looks like one to filter for your network.

  • Trackback spam and countermeasures like Akismet and trackback validation

    As I’ve already commented today…. there has been a massive trackback spam swarm going on the last 24 hours. I’ve now racked up 1300 or so in the Akismet filter on this site and another 150 or so on another two sites. Akismet has been very impressive in defending this attack. Only 1% of the trackbacks slipped through, or about 14 or so across three sites. I’ve looked to see what other measures I can take against trackback spam and found one that looks like it should eliminate the 1% that got through.

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  • Scansafe tries to make web browsing safer…

    Scansafe is launching a new free product called scandoo which aims to tag search results with Green yellow and blow widgets so you know which sites are safe (green), dangerous (red) or uncertain (Yellow). ZDnet had news of the scandoo service which is not the first attempt at making the web safe… Siteadvisor from McAfee attempts to do the same (with installed software) and Symantec is working on a competitor as well. Further there are toolbars that attempt to protect users from phishing scams, but I’m not sure that this service will be as successful as hoped.

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  • Google explains Google China Decision

    The Official Googleblog has an article today about their decision to filter results in China. I took a look at the Chinese version today (I saw an image search comparing Tienamen (spelling?) results in English and Chinese. I also searched for my site and found that I seem to be absent from the Chinese search results. Now you might say the latter is not surprising for a number of reasons, but I’ve found other English language sites showing up in the Google.cn results…. I guess information about computer security is too risky for the Chinese People to find. !!Correction-8:30PM EST!! I had earlier seen Sunbelt mention guiness.com missing from the results and they just noted that was in the results now. Likewise, my site was missing and now is present in the Google.cn results… !!End Correction!!

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  • Network administration over the holidays

    Nobody wants to be tied to their job over the holidays, but what if someone has hacked your servers and is using your machine to scam thousands of people a day? Does that keep for two weeks? Does someone monitor the abuse address? Incidents.org has a post on messages they’ve got from some reporting to abuse administrators receiving back vacation notices that things are basically on “autopilot until sometime next year.”

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  • Spammers/ phishers looking to get past “turin test” images

    A lot of web sites these days use “turin tests” to keep from having automated bots sign up for mail or other services. (Or post entries to a forum or something.) For those that don’t know, a turin test is a test designed to filter machines from people. I doubt I’m the only one that has occasionaly found one of those squiggly letter/number images to be so distorted that I’ve failed the test… Anyway, it seems that there is a new trend in phishing/spamming emails. From incidents.org they’re seeing some mass mailing attempts that seem to be aimed at getting people to identify “Captcha” graphics for them. (A captcha is basically the random number image used in many online turin tests.)

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  • Porn Spam indictments…

    The Security Fix is reporting that the Justice department will imminently indict four people accused of sending large volumes of porn spam in violation of the CAN-SPAM act which requires explicit junkmail to be specifically labeled “SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT” in the subject line.

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