News

One of the biggest supermarket chains in the USA fell victim to online fraudsters.

Evidently, no one at Minnesota-based Supervalu bothered to confirm the authenticity of emails sent in late February. Purporting to come from two of the company’s suppliers, the messages instructed Supervalu to wire all future payments to new bank accounts.

Supervalu wired $10m into the fraudulent accounts. Sheesh.

The Register article.

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AOL has been in the news for laying off employees and moving their headquarters to Manhattan, New York City.

Bill Pytlovany blogged this with a new twist:

I never signed up or requested Emails from Side Step. The Email was very careful to follow the minimum requirements of the Can-Spam Act of 2003. Having this Email “Certified” by AOL means nothing to me other than “Advertising OnLine” was paid by this company to spam my Email account.

Silicon Alley Insider: Randy Falco Email to employees.

Time Warner: Randy Falco Bio.

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Spybot-Search and Destroy, Home Page

We have to admit, it was delayed a few times, mostly because we always had some new feature we wanted to implement in mind, but now it’s finally here: we’re proud to announce the availability of Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.5. This new version features a lot of improved detection mechanisms (which in parts were already made available through the regular 1.4 updates in the past months), improved Operating System support (Windows Vista integration, restored support for Windows 95, more compatibility with Wine, support for bootable Windows CDs), improved browser support (e.g. for immunization) and much more - you can find an overview of noticable changes and some screenshots here.

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Zango Drops Lawsuit Against PC Tools

Adware company Zango has voluntarily withdrawn its lawsuit against security software company PC Tools, which Zango accused of illegally removing its software from users’ PCs without their express permission. The move follows a court’s refusal to grant Zango a temporary restraining order.

Article at BetaNews.

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TechNet: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/default.mspx

Exchange Server Q&A with the MVP Experts
Exchange MVPs will be on hand to answer your questions about Exchange Server, Outlook and Exchange for Small Business Server.
Chat 1
When: Tuesday June 19th
Time: 5pm PST or 8pm EST
Where: TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx
No password required

Chat 2
When: Thursday June 21st
Time: 10am PST or 1pm EST
Where: TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx
No password required

Q&A with the Security MVP Experts
In this chat the MVP experts will answer your questions regarding online safety issues such as phishing, spyware, rootkits as well as server related topics. If you have questions on how to protect your PC, please bring them to this informative chat.
When: Thursday June 21st
Time: 4pm PST and 7pm EST
Where: TechNet Chat Room www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/chatroom.aspx
No password required

ABC News reports the FBI has identified 1 million computer addresses that have been hacked by criminals who hijack other people’s computers, turn them into servers and use them to send out massive amounts of spam and spyware.

Story abcNews

The home of Spybot-Search and Destroy.
News Link 11. June 2007

Also, after struggling for months with Microsoft about Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.5 and the more advanced Certified for Vista logo, we have decided not to get our next release certified. While we found the “Certified for Vista” logo requirements to be very useful to enforce a high software quality in general, it has a huge drawback, which essentially makes every certified security software prone to getting disabled by malware. Under these circumstances, version 1.5 will only receive the “Works with Windows Vista” logo, but at least there’s nothing left blocking the release, which will take place as a beta version this week.

For those interested in the technical background of the decision:

Microsoft requires software that applies for this logo program to immediately crash when confronted with a situation described by Microsoft in detail. The background of this still is useful in a standard situation - software that has bugs should actually crash instead of just trying to hide them, so that Windows Error Reporting can log the problem and forward it to the developer. This way Microsoft can assure that applications that are part of the “Certified for Vista” program are of high quality.

However, In the context of a security application, this is hazardous: if malware writers can use a perfectly documented way to crash a security application, the overall security is greatly harmed. To avoid this, we suggested some alternatives to Microsoft that would not compromise the goal of submitting bug reports on errors that are the fault of the developer of the software. In the end though, some people at Microsoft seem to be too certain that Vista is absolutely safe, upon which we do not intend to comment, since key Microsofts employees have already done so, for example Jim Allchin or Mark Russinovich.

http://www.spybot.info/en/news/2007-06-11.html

Amero, former Norwich substitute teacher, has been granted a new trial in light of fresh forensic information.

Assistant State’s Attorney David Smith had argued in her first trial, that the evidence was “clear cut” Amero was at fault because she caused the pornography to appear on the computer.

Today, Smith said the state would take no position on Dow’s motion for a new trial, making it unlikely Amero will be tried again. Smith acknowledged erroneous information about the computer was presented during the first trial.

The Hartford Courant.
Rick Green
Amero Granted New Trial

Amero’s case became a hot issue for bloggers throughout the country, many of whom sharply criticized the guilty verdict. Strackbein criticized the bloggers today, saying they tried to “improperly influence” the court.

Say what…….
Julie Amero sentencing delayed for third time

You may recall it was reported that the judge, Hillary Strackbein, was seen falling asleep during proceedings and made comments to the jury that she wanted the case over by the end of the week. Rather ironic at this point.

Someone had to be awake at the gate.

Brian Krebs from The Washington Post Substitute Teacher Granted New Trial in Porn Case

Is it over?
Alex Eckelberry, Some comments on the Julie Amero case

Washington CEO Article

By Keith Smith, co-founder and chief executive officer of Zango Inc., an online advertising and media company.

Every company runs into obstacles. My company, Zango Inc., has encountered more than most.

Then we encountered an obstacle that threatened our existence. The third-party software distribution network we had established had to be dismantled. Some of these partners, despite contractual agreements, were defrauding us and, more importantly, harming consumers’ computers. Zango became the subject of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation. We had long since ceased our partnerships and, in some situations, had filed legal actions against these no-gooders, but we nonetheless worked cooperatively with the FTC, outlining steps to provide additional protection to consumers. In the end, we reached a settlement that stipulated a list of rules by which we must abide, almost all of which we had already implemented as part of our distribution and technology transition.

Hmmm….

Spyware Still Cheating Merchants and Legitimate Affiliates
Ben Edelman. May 21, 2007 - Updated, May 22, 2007