Monthly Archives: January 2008

"I'm Feeling Lucky" Abuse Update

Something extra interesting I’ve noticed. It now appears as though I’m now being targeted by spammers, I’m now getting a nice portion of trackback and comment spam attempts on my site

… and guess what its for.

It doesn’t matter to much though because I keep an eye on things, and maintain some measures that prevent most of the content being chucked at my site.

Some new Phrases picked up:

inurl:rkcerock.com+VPXL+Made+Easy
thereseason Vancouver BC V6J 5C6
thereseason Canada V6J 5C6

Please see original article for details regarding this and why you have received an email that has brought you to this site.

"I'm Feeling Lucky" Abuse Update

Four more phrases for “I’m Feeling Lucky” abuse have been seen today using a mixture of methods previously discussed.

Phrases added to original article:

inurl:rihancas.com+VPXL+Made+Easy
thereseason.com V6J 5C6
VPXL+Made+Easy+rivilas.com
inurl:thereseason.com canadian

Please see original article for details regarding this and why you have received an email that has brought you to this site.

Google Abuse Update, Now With Adwords

It appears as though the pharmaceutical spammers are now exploiting Google Adwords as their new redirect of choice. What an interesting way to make money for them, not old do they get some suckers credit cards details and sell them some fake drugs they can also rip-off Google as well.

Example of Adwords URL:URL is modified from original to prevent functional link

http://google.co.uk//pagead/iclk?sa=l&ai=polis&num=3449123&adurl=http://example.com

Also using the old method the following new phrase has been sited and added:

注册成功boyhad

Please see original article for details regarding this and why you have received an email that has brought you to this site.

"I'm Feeling Lucky" Spam Targets Google Taiwan

It now looks like the “I’m Feeling Lucky” spammers have started using languages other than english, and are now using Google Taiwan ( Google 臺灣 ) to do their dirty work. Not only that but they are now using the inurl: parameter.

inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to documents containing that word in the url. For instance, [inurl:google search] will return documents that mention the word “google” in their url, and mention the word “search” anywhere in the document (url or no). Note there can be no space between the “inurl:” and the following word.

Putting “inurl:” in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting “allinurl:” at the front of your query: [inurl:google inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl: google search].
inurl explanation source

The search phrase this time is: inurl:boyhad.com VDNS6管理系统

While I don’t think it would be possible to hijack this search in an attempt to block it, it is still a good idea to keep record.

Also note that the phrases domain2find welcome to us, 立即boyhad登陆 turned up today as well.

Please see original article for details regarding this and why you have received an email that has brought you to this site.

UPDATE
Looks like not just Taiwan now. The same phrase in Traditional Chinese ( 繁體中文 ) is being used on Google from multiple countries.

Phishing Facebook

No, it’s not an application that you want to play with, it’s actually a scam to steal your user name and password.

Some Facebook users checking their accounts Wednesday found odd postings of messages on their “wall” from one of their friends, saying: “lol i can’t believe these pics got posted…. it’s going to be BADDDD when her boyfriend sees these,” followed by what looks like a genuine Facebook link.

When the user clicks on this page they are taken to a fake Facebook login page, where their details are collected.

www.facebook.com.profile.php.id.371233.cn is the offending URL.

Source Wired.com

SNR Margin & Attenuation Rates for DSL

SNR Margin

In general, a higher signal to noise ratio will result in less errors.

  • 6bB. or below = Bad and will experience no line synchronisation or intermittent synchronisation problems.
  • 7dB-10dB. = Fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions.
  • 11dB-20dB. = Good with little or no synchronisation problems
  • 20dB-28dB. = Excellent
  • 29dB. or above = Outstanding

Attenuation Rates

In general, attenuation is the loss of signal over distance. Unfortunately, dB loss is not just dependent on distance. It also depends on cable type and gauge (which can differ over the length of the cable), the number and location other connection points on the cable.

  • 20bB. and below = Outstanding
  • 20dB-30dB. = Excellent
  • 30dB-40dB. = Very Good
  • 40dB-50dB. = Good
  • 50dB-60dB. = Poor and may experience connectivity issues
  • 60dB. and above = Bad and will experience connectivity issues

AOL Redirect Abuse

Ok, the spammers have resorted to a new redirector. They are now leveraging AOL to do their dirty work.

Below is an example:
http://r.aol.com/cgi/redir?http://www.example.com/

Any URL a person likes can be placed after this and it will cause that site to load using the AOL site as a redirector. This allows for a filtering bypass e.g URIBLs will see AOL, not the spammers site placed at the end.