CAUCE

Facebook Vs. Adam Guerbuez And Atlantis Blue Capital

Facebook won an immense judgement against Montreal, Canada spammer and phisher Adam Guerbuez.

Guerbuez has a storied history, having been found arrested for uttering threats in 1997, charged with murder in 2000, faced marjuana charges in 2004 and perhaps most interestingly his online presence which began in 2003, he interviewed in the Montreal Mirror about his bum-fighting (homeless people paid to beat one another) websites crazypricks.com and bumvision.com. Currently he runs ballervision.com

Facebook's lawyers submitted this affidavit to the court outlining the character of Mr. Guerbuez, including his involvement with Neo-Nazi groups, and his criminal past.

CAUCE has been quoted today in the aftermath

NewsFactor Network

CTV

CAUCE President John levine also has some commentary on his personal blog
The Globe and Mail quotes Federal Task Force on Spam member Michael Geist regarding the lack of Canadian spam law and enforcement.

The Montreal Gazette makes note of Guerbuez' notorious past

Mr. Guerbuez's personal blog refutes any notoriety.

McColo and the Difficulty of Fighting Spam

CAUCE's own Ray Everett-Church writes: It may be a truism that "little things mean a lot," but in the world of spam, flipping a single switch can have huge consequences that span the globe. We saw that concept reinforced this past week when McColo Corp., an Internet hosting firm based in San Jose, Calif., had its Internet connection shut off by its upstream connectivity providers on suspicion that McColo was serving as a command and control center for various spamming "bot net" operations as well as a base of operations for various other unsavory activities. Of course everyone, even McColo, is innocent until proven guilty. But in the days following the disconnection, global spam volumes have reportedly dropped by nearly two-thirds. I suppose it could be a coincidence... Read the rest here.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

by Neil Schwartzman

"If I stay there will be trouble; …If I go there will be double." — Joe Strummer (1952-2002)

"We can be heroes, just for one day." - David Bowie (1947- ) 

Working in the anti-spam and online malware fight can be depressing or at best invoke multiple personality disorder.

We all know things are bad on the net, but if you want a dose of stark reality, check out Brian Krebs' fantastic Security Fix blog on the Washington Post site. Written with both technical accuracy and readability for the rest of us, a rare thing indeed, Brian is the current raving-fav among the security set, due to his high profile, and willingness to call a spade a spade.

He has shone the spotlight of national media on some real embarrassments, situations like ICANN dragging their feet regarding the decertification of rogue registrar EstDomains (a service much-favoured by malware authors and spammers), (they are now offline), Atrivo, a California-based ISP which played a pivotal role in sustaining the Storm botnet, (they are now offline) and Krebs played a part in the latest victory for us good guys on the net, noting McColo was a host for botnet command-and-control technologies  (yes, they too are now offline!)

So why the ambivalence Neil? Good question! Speaking to an old friend who asked me what I was doing these days, I recently likened the fight against this relentless onslaught to having one's pinky in a dyke, and there are days when I don't even think we have a dyke! We've certainly seen dedicated anti-spam/anti-malware volunteers suffer from burn-out, and drop off, over the years, a loss to all of us as an Internet community.

CAUCE Executive Director Neil Schwartzman on CTV Newsnet speaking to Canadian Inactivity regarding Spam Laws

CAUCE Executive Director Neil Schwartzman appeared on CTV Newsnet November 07, 2008

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/spammed-out/#clip110343