Archive for July 22, 2012

Third Largest Botnet Taken Down… Less Spam For You… For Now….

Posted in Commentary with tags , on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

Last week a group of researchers announced that Grum which was the third largest botnet on the planet had been taken down by blocking the botnet’s command and control servers in both the Netherlands and Panama. What does this mean for you? It means that 18% – as much as 50% of the world’s spam volume has just disappeared.

Excellent!

However the people who run this botnet were able to briefly bring it back up before it was shut down again. It’s likely not to stay down, though bringing it back may be a problem:

“It’s not about creating a new server. They’d have to start an entirely new campaign and infect hundreds of thousands of new machines to get something like Grum started again,” said Atif Mushtaq, a computer security specialist at FireEye.”They’d have to build from scratch. Because of how the malware was written for Grum, when the master server is dead, the infected machines can no longer send spam or communicate with a new server.”

So this is a win. But it may only be a short lived one before the mayhem starts again. So enjoy the reprieve from spam while it lasts.

Have A Sonos HiFi System? Have A Tablet Or Smart Phone? Have They Got An App For You!

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

Sonos who makes some killer HiFi gear have announced updates for the smartphone and tablet apps. Sonos has made to its interface for Android and iOS devices. The key changes include:

  • Support for Retina screens on iOS devices.
  • Landscape format for Android devices.
  • Use of the physical volume rocker to control the Sonos system volume from iOS devices.
  • Support for 7 inch and 10 inch Android tablets.

Need more info? Check out this blog post for more. It’s great that Sonos is keen to update these apps as it really helps to leverage their impressive gear.

Peer 1 Succeeds At Home And Abroad

Posted in Commentary with tags on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

Being Canadian I like to write about Canadian companies that are succeeding in the marketplace. Case in point is Peer 1 who are a hosting company out of Vancouver that I’ve written about on several occasions. They announced recently that they have had a record year, and is poised for continued growth as a key player in the international web hosting market. From the press release:

“We have seen significant growth in North America and overseas in the past twelve months,” said Fabio Banducci, President and CEO, PEER 1 Hosting. “That success couldn’t have been achieved without our people. Our people and their tireless dedication to superior customer service is the reason why companies around the globe are turning to PEER 1 to realize the potential of the internet.”

Now you can read the press release for all the details of all the things they did in the last twelve months (and all of them are very significant), but I’ll say this. Anytime a Canadian company can succeed at home and overseas, that’s a good thing. Success stories like Peer 1 should be applauded. I look forward to seeing more from them in the near future.

Hey IT Nerd! How Do I Get My E-Mail When I Am Away From Home?

Posted in Tips with tags on July 22, 2012 by itnerd

I got this rather interesting e-mail from a reader yesterday:

I am going on vacation in a weeks time. My ISP doesn’t have webmail access and I want to be able to get my e-mail while on vacation. However I don’t want to buy a laptop to do so as I prefer to simply go to a cybercafe instead. Any ideas?

My first comment is that whomever your ISP is, you need to get a new one. It’s 2012 and if your ISP doesn’t have webmail access, that truly qualifies as a #fail. Webmail isn’t that hard to implement as it comes with most commercial and open source e-mail servers that are out there. So there’s truly no excuse. Having said that, here is what I would recommend using a free service called. Mail2Web.com which allows you in most cases to access your e-mail through a web based interface. It works quite well and has no learning curve other than you knowing your e-mail address and the password to your account. Try it before you go and I think you’ll find it’s exactly what you’re looking for.