Author Archives: MagicMail

BotNets kick into high gear again worldwide

Okay, this isn’t that much of a threat as it seems, as most of it can be stopped by using simple RBL (Real Time Blacklists) that block the generic home style connections, sometimes referred to as DUL or Dynamic IP … Continue reading

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ISP’s can help stop CryptoLocker Virus

Another very large bot net was used last night to send out invoice scam emails, with a crypto locker attachment, and while good spam protection should catch most of these, it is a shame that ISP’s aren’t doing more to … Continue reading

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Old Fashioned Bot Network, Compromised Accounts

We have been doing a lot of reporting of networks that house spammers, but today we have a chance to talk about an old fashioned bot network. Normally, they are going out of style as a way to send spam, … Continue reading

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Is your CPE equipment secure?

It appears that a large spam bot has taken up a new home over the last couple of days, and in this case it appears to be NOT on consumer devices, computers, or servers, but on the very structure that … Continue reading

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The problem with a ‘Digital Ocean’

While in our case all of these connections are marked as spam, today’s logs showed a good example while the idea of an anonymous ‘ocean’ of IP(s) is not really a good idea. A small ‘digital pool’ at least where … Continue reading

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Pesky Russian Spam Sources Increasing Again?

As you know, I often point out how bad the North American hosting companies can be as spam sources, but of course with most of the hosting companies being in North America, this would be logical. It used to be … Continue reading

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Get your Amazon Gift Card? fightspam.ca

It’s Xmas time, so of course this is the time of year when people try to take advantage, have you ever got one of those surprise Amazon Gift Cards in the email? Well, here is an example of what hit … Continue reading

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How easy it is for spammers to get IP(s)

It used to be the spammer’s favourite trick was to use virus’s, trojans etc to take over home computers to send spam, but spammers have found that often it is easier just to order IP Space. Some hosting companies look … Continue reading

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Linode Outbreaks, why PTR Important

Today’s report is about Linode, but of course this could be about many different providers, and is a reason why the ability to block emails based on the PTR records is important, and it is best when it can be … Continue reading

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Rejecting ‘before’ SMTP processes

It is always surprising how much benefit you can get by blocking at the edge, on very simple rule sets, and how much load can be reduced. Of course it depends on your implementation, sometimes that means blocking at the … Continue reading

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