Terry Zink: Security Talk
Discussing Internet security in (mostly) plain English
Rule of Comedy: Know Thy Audience
The other day I was over at a friend's place watching Season 1 of Battlestar Galatica (the remake,...
Author: tzink Date: 01/14/2009
What's the end goal?
Sometimes I hear the joke, or conspiracy theory, that anti-virus companies are at least partly...
Author: tzink Date: 01/09/2009
The first spam observation of 2009
It's been a week since I last posted, and I have noticed a trend in 2009 that continues on in the...
Author: tzink Date: 01/08/2009
More on whether cybersecurity should be managed from the White House
Continuing on from my previous post, should there be a central government authority that oversees...
Author: tzink Date: 12/30/2008
Merry Christmas!
I had my birthday a couple of weeks ago and one of the things I did was perform one of my favorite...
Author: tzink Date: 12/25/2008
Personalized Spam
The Times of India has an article entitled This Spam is Just For You! The article is awkwardly...
Author: tzink Date: 12/22/2008
The trouble with SMTP
SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is the Internet protocol that the world uses to transmit...
Author: tzink Date: 12/22/2008
Sometimes security restrictions are annoying
As I relate some of my travels, I often observe how many security leaks there are in everyday...
Author: tzink Date: 12/19/2008
Security only works if you follow procedure
I've been traveling the past two weeks, which explains the dearth of posts in this blog. But...
Author: tzink Date: 12/19/2008
So true
As I moved from Spam Analyst to Program Manager, I have gone from project-implementer to...
Author: tzink Date: 12/12/2008
A conspiracy theory
Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of instances where some of our outbound customers...
Author: tzink Date: 12/08/2008
Operating system security vulnerabilities
A few weeks ago, Microsoft released its 2008 Security and Intelligence Report. In it, they...
Author: tzink Date: 12/01/2008
Spamhaus lists Microsoft as a spam-friendly ISP - update
A week ago, the Washington Post printed an article saying that Spamhaus had listed Microsoft as the...
Author: tzink Date: 11/28/2008
Trends from 2008
I have commented that one of the major trends that I have seen this year is a steady decline in the...
Author: tzink Date: 11/26/2008
Do I even bother trying to save the world?
In one of my other posts, I lamented that some of our outbound mail from customers was being sent by...
Author: tzink Date: 11/24/2008
The antispam accuracy of sender verification
Three simple techniques that are used as inputs for filtering spam are the following: Check to see...
Author: tzink Date: 11/18/2008
Some cool techniques for image filtering
In 2006, spammers started in a big way to use image spam to try to push through all of their...
Author: tzink Date: 11/16/2008
Major spam operation goes offline, spam plummets
This has been picked up by a couple of other blogs (I'm almost never the first to report on these...
Author: tzink Date: 11/13/2008
Microsoft's Security and Intelligence Report
Microsoft has recently released its Security and Intelligence Report for January - June...
Author: tzink Date: 11/11/2008
Why socialism is bad
About a week or two ago, I saw then-Senator Barack Obama doing an interview on The Daily Show with...
Author: tzink Date: 11/08/2008
Postini's new features
Over on the Google Enterprise Blog, they recently posted the following with regards to some new...
Author: tzink Date: 11/07/2008
Oh, how the mighty have fallen
A few months ago, Yahoo rebuffed Microsoft's attempt to purchase it. Now, this morning, I come...
Author: tzink Date: 11/06/2008
Obama's victory and spammers?
So, Barack Obama is going to be the 44th President of the United States. I was ineligible to...
Author: tzink Date: 11/05/2008
Apple Mail and the Bounce feature
The other day, I was talking with a friend of mine who owns a Mac and how he finds the Bounce...
Author: tzink Date: 10/31/2008
Stories from China - part 2
The second part of my story from China includes the completion of one of my lifelong dreams -...
Author: tzink Date: 10/26/2008
Viruses on the streets of China
While I was in the city of Xi'an, I lost my digital camera. Whether I lost it or if it was...
Author: tzink Date: 10/22/2008
Spamming on the streets of China
I just got back from my trip to China. It was a pretty good trip, all in all, and I have some...
Author: tzink Date: 10/22/2008
The merits and hazards of redundancy
In an ideal world, all you would really need in order to do spam filtering is one filter - this...
Author: tzink Date: 10/07/2008
To collaborate or not?
We're at the state now where the problem of spam has grown to the point that it threatens to ruin...
Author: tzink Date: 10/06/2008
A CAPTCHA that beats bots and spammers
A coworker came across the following CAPTCHA. Finally, one that can beat spammers and their...
Author: tzink Date: 10/06/2008
Funny spam image
I was surfing the web looking for spam images for a presentation and came across the...
Author: tzink Date: 10/03/2008
Whose fault is it, anyway?
Continuing on in my theme of security, I recently asked myself the question "If you reveal to...
Author: tzink Date: 10/02/2008