Techie :: Techno ::: March 2004 Archives

I've spent a good bit of the evening trying to persuade Mailman that working would be a good idea. Luckily Niall came to my rescue, but I am still confused as to why it decided to stop working. I am not a happy camper!!

I was browsing Hotscripts last night when I came across yet another cool little tool based on Amazon XML. Less than two years ago Amazon gave their XML interface a "soft launch" and the number of tools and scripts you can now get to interface with it is simply overwhelming. There are two plugins installed with this blog, both interfacing with ease with the XML stream. On other sites I've literally thrown in little bits and pieces that I've come across on my nocturnal meanderings across the web. In many ways Amazon has really revolutionised XML and web services by making a service that gives webmasters an incentive to program. I wonder whether the community as whole will benefit in the long term..

This week we saw the arrival of what could best be described as an "intelligent virus". Most viruses rely to some degree on social engineering in order to trick the recipient into clicking on the attachment and thus infecting their PC. However, until now at least, most of these viruses were not that convincing. This week's variant made use of the existing trust that exists between endusers and their IT dept./ISP/hosting company. The email seems to come from a variety of addresses, but, unlike other viruses, this one forges an address at your domain. It would not be surprising, therefore, if I had got one from support@mneylon.com !! Needless to say I didn't, but that's hardly the point. The point is that endusers will inherently trust their suppliers / IT departments, so sending a virus like this could easily have lead an enduser into clicking on the attachment. Of course we got quite a few calls and emails from clients who were confused and thought that the emails were genuine, or simply could not understand why the AV filters had let some of the emails through. OF course the problem lay with the type of attachment that was being sent, or was that another virus? This last week has seen so many ... In many ways you can see this as being a war. An electronic war. Against spammers and virus writers. The only question that remains is who will be the victor.