RE: A new level of spam?

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Did anybody other than me notice that organized crime did not get into
this stuff until it was obvious that there was a lot of
bang-for-the-buck?
That is, only once it had been repeatedly proven that there was a
sufficiently huge "market" of Windows PCs to make exploits a guaranteed
profit-center did business-savvy criminals divert resources from other
types of sleaze. The turning-point came when black-hats began to figure
out how to turn "the anonymous safety of great numbers" into
"target-rich environment". After that, it's been a greased downhill
slide.
So, the solution is to fragment the market until it is all-niche all the
time. Switch to Linux. At the very least, switch to Linux for your
browsing. 
People who like to hear themselves talk (oh-oh, I'm treading dangerously
close to home on this one...) will chime in: "As soon as Linux gets
really popular, the spammers and malware developers will see it as a
target as inviting as Windows, then you'll find out that your precious
Linux isn't invulnerable after all." 

However, the application of more than .03 seconds and a microWatt of
thought shows that Linux comes in many flavors, such that a massive
adoption of Linux would ensure a fragmentary market compared to Windows
(today). A fragmentary market still means diminished motivation for the
black-hats. In a fragmented market of many, many niches (flavors of
Linux, in this example) they have to perform far more work to access the
same number of dummies. This makes the overall "market" less lucrative,
and therefore less attractive.

There are no absolutes in such a game, but do we really want to
volunteer to be the low-hanging fruit? 

 - Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From:
techwr-l-bounces+kevin -dot- mclauchlan=safenet-inc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+kevin -dot- mclauchlan=safenet-inc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-
> l.com] On Behalf Of Dan Goldstein
> Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 08:47
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: RE: A new level of spam?
> 
> Junk mail filtering looks at the plain text content of the message and
> associates it with other known junk mail. Antispyware scans e-mail
> attachments for malicious content. But neither one investigates the
> linked Wed addresses embedded in the e-mail message.
> 
> Firefox and Google can check a Web address for malicious content
> *before* you go to it. You'd think that there would be a way to link
> that functionality with an antispyware program. I use Spy Sweeper at
> home and wrote to the vendor (Webroot) about this; their response was
> essentially, "Sorry, no can do."

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