However, this feel-good-factor has now been tempered with the news that McColo was able reconnect itself to the internet. It turns out that they had negotiated rights to a backup internet connection via TeliaSonera.  McColo quickly tried to update their servers over the weekend just past, in the hope that there would be a window of opportunity before the security forces could react and shut them down again, which is what happened.

Now, TeliaSonera have done nothing wrong here, they had acted through a retailer (who did nothing wrong either)  who had sold the connection to McColo. What it does point out is that when shutting down rogues like McColo, all the possible approaches that they might employ to reactivate themselves need to be covered off up-front.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and UC, San Diego (UCSD) are reporting that spammers are turning a profit despite only getting one response for every 12.5 million emails sent.  That translates itself into a response rate of circa 0.00001%. Most  direct mail organisations would set the bar at 2% for a ‘good’ campaign.

There is no particular news in the revelation that the spammers live off of sheer volume of spam email. The researchers here were purporting to be a fake pharmacy, peddling a herbal remedy to boost libido. This is pretty much representative, so it does call into question just how profitable it can be for them?  It does bring to the fore the point, that even with spam, the laws of return on investment still apply. With such a low-margin business, they are susceptible to advances in  new anti-spam and security software defences, that would render current techniques and campaigns as not worth it to them. Or, so we can but hope.

UCSD used some interesting tactics with their research. They managed to piggy-back on the ‘Storm’ network that uses hijacked home computers as relays for spam.  The ethics of this are open to debate, particularly when the researched added another 469 million spam emails that the world need not necessarily benefit from.

Full details of the Symantec State of Spam report for November can be found here.

Now, no sooner have the Beijing Olympics started to pass into memory than we start to see the London 2012 Olympics start to be exploited by the spammers. We detected a lottery scam around London 2012, wherein the recipient is informed they have won £950K. All they need do is contact the ‘paying agent’ and provide details to collect their ‘winnings’.  And so, with that, the countdown to London 2012 begins in terms of scams, and socially engineered malware attacks.

Instant messages, social networking sites, forums, blogs and old fashioned email – in the ever expanding maze of communication methods Internet security is often a tough and confusing subject for parents to broach with their children. We recently conducted a survey into children and parent’s online behavior and  found that many parents are still in denial over the varied dangers on the Internet and are ignoring the sampling their children are doing. Only four in 10 online parents in UK have spoken to their child on safe Internet practices despite 87 per cent of children feeling comfortable talking to their parents about their online experiences. *

Cory encouraged readers to ‘Give your children honest, useful privacy information’ and to try and help combat this disparity between parent and child. That’s what we have been advocating in a recent initiative, called ‘The Talk’ as part of our Norton Family Online safety Initiative.  Remember ‘The Talk’ your parents had with you? Those uncomfortable conversations with our parents on sex education? Well, we’ve been encouraging parents to adapt this for talking to their children about the Internet. A mutually beneficial discussion, it will allow the child to appreciate both the important role the Internet can play in their lives for learning as well as the potential dangers. The end goal of this is for parent and child to come to a mutual agreement outlining the ‘rules of engagement’ regarding the child’s behaviour online.  

Getting one’s child to describe their experiences, with honesty, may be difficult, particularly if the parent is not an Internet expert or as skilled as their children.  But that is OK, because it’s not necessary for a parent to be an expert to help their children enjoy the Internet safely.

Taking this initiative will hopefully enable parents to develop their knowledge of what their child does on the Internet whilst encouraging the child to interact safely and learn how to value and protect their personal privacy and identity online.

In travelling around and meeting with the Press, invariably the conversation gets round to a discussion about ‘what will be the threats in the future’? Now, predicting the future is a notorious game. However, I have long held the view that we are seeing the future being played out today. Our world is all about the internet and that is what will be attacked and wherein where the threats will come.  What is important, is having access to the ‘net at all times and in a flexible and adaptable way. Increasingly, we see the ‘net and our daily lives through a ‘browser’. We are seeing the browser being attacked and exploited. Whilst, at the same time, the browsers are becoming increasingly platform or OS, agnostic. You just expect your favourite browser experience to be available to you, never mind what device you are using, or where you are. Now, we are not quite there yet, but the direction is set. Which, gets me back to that advert for the new smartphone.

I really need to listen to myself a little more. The ‘OS’ really need not matter to me – I need to conquer that particular addiction. I need only concern myself with whether I can connect to the ‘net, surf and email, listen to music, use the GPS and watch movies. Importantly, that it should be safe at all times and in all situations.

Getting awareness and engagement on how to keep safe online is an on-going focus and commitment for us. The formation of the UK Council for Children Internet Safety (UKCCIS) this month, shows the importance of this issue and that it is now recognised at a national level. Reporting directly to the Prime Minister, the Council will help improve regulation and education around keeping children safe when online.

For our part we have decided to broach this important topic with schools and children in a fun, yet informative way – “Enter stage left”, Perform. In working with the guys at Perform, we have created two characters, Zak and Zara. Set in the future on ‘Planet Disco’, the children are taken through a colourful story and along the way meet interesting and fun characters, while learning key online safety messages around topics such as cyber-bullying and using chat-rooms safely.

For more information, or practical advice for parents and children on staying safe online, then please follow this link to the Norton Family Online safety resources web site.

Within the article, there was an example given of how counterfeit routers were sold to the US Marine Corp and Air Force. The US based distributors of the counterfeit routers have subsequently been indicted.  Following on from this, the FBI provided a  briefing in which they outlined how counterfeit routers ‘could’ allow foreign agents to disrupt secure networks and ‘weaken cryptographic systems’.  Now, from what I could discern, there was no proof that these routers had been used to compromise any networks: but the point is made and understood.

For the moment, in the world of malware, Trojans are proving to be a popular and effective delivery method for the bad guys.  It is interesting to see, in this example,  the possibility for hardware to be used as the receptacle for the delivery of an exploit or attack. The hardware is the ‘Trojan’ and the threat lurks within. Given the fact, that increasingly, all manner of electronic devices now have some form of storage, processing power and the ability to ‘network’ themselves, then at a conceptual level, we can see the potential security issues.  Now, actual examples of real-life exploits are few and far between, to my knowledge. That being said, the Businessweek article moves the story on one more notch.

Once again, what it does show, is that the search to get branded goods at ‘bargain’ prices does come at some cost.  Notably, security.  As with everything, the lesson has to be: check into the provenance of what you are buying.

There was a side of me that was pleased that the readers felt comfortable and able to discern the elements of a modern day security product. Well, we have been talking about ‘strength-in-depth’ for a long time now and people would seem to recognise and understand this. But then again, one could generalise that the readers of PC Advisor are the more technically engaged and interested. Hence, they could determine the different aspect of a security product’s arsenal.  The reality is that probably, most people would not know the respective merits of one element of a security product from another. Nor should they I suppose, they expect us security companies to take care of all this stuff for them.

In that regard security software has gone the way of the automotive industry. Gone are the days when  you could lift the ‘bonnet’ of a car and marvel at the site of the carburettor, the overhead gasket and the timing belt. Back then, we were encouraged to take an interest, it was a talking point in drive-ways across the land as men-folk (trying not to be sexist here), would congregate to view and discuss the relative merits of one car engine versus the other. Have we fallen out of love with the car? No, we have simply moved on.

Now, with security software, times are moving on and fast. Many of the more obvious elements of the software are being supplanted and changed. We are trying to keep security software ‘out of the faces of users’, as much as we can. We are trying to do much of the job in the background and away from the user. It will be interesting to see, what aspects, of a security product PC Advisor readers will rate in two to three years time.

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