Spam tools get even nastier

Wired News calls them spackers - "the new breed of computer crackers who earn a living in cahoots with spammers". The latest innovations developed by hackers on behalf of the junk e-mail profession are techniques that enable spammers to create untraceable Web sites.

One group in Poland is advertising "invisible bulletproof hosting" in online forums for spammers. For $1 500 per month, the group says it can protect a site from network sleuthing tools used by spam opponents, such as traceroute and whois.

Until now, anti-spammers have relied on such tools to identify the IP address behind a Web site advertised by spam. In the past, shutting down a site was often just a matter of notifying the hosting company responsible for the IP address. But the new technique makes these tools futile, according to experts familiar with the method.

In other news, PEW Internet has published findings on user spam experiences.

A program that exploits a software vulnerability Microsoft recently described could spell trouble for companies that haven`t quickly patched their system, security experts quoted by CNet said this week.

Released on a security mailing list earlier this week, the program takes advantage of a flaw in Microsoft`s Messenger Service to cause Windows-based computers to crash. The vulnerability affects almost every current Microsoft Windows system, leaving security experts concerned that independent hackers will quickly find a way to take control of a large number of computers by exploiting the flaw.

Red Hat has introduced Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, the newest addition to its Open Source Architecture platform, and according to one analyst its improved support for Java and threads will have many Red Hat users making an upgrade, reports ITWorldCanada.

One of the key features of the new Red Hat Linux is its ability to support seven hardware architectures: Intel`s X86, Intel`s Itanium, Advanced Micro Devices` AMD64, and IBM`s ZSeries, ISeries, PSeries, and S/390.