The Spirit Killer

Abstract I wonder how a person can overcome the Spirit Killers?. Without going further let’s define a Spirit Killer; Basically, a so-called Spirit Killer is a person who manages to listen to our brilliant idea, to later undeniably judge it and then just “Kill our thought” in a snap. Now the process is rather quick, usually, the damage is invisible at the time. The idea listener AKA Spirit Killer, without spending much time (at least twice the time to analyze it) will defeat or destroy the spirit or the idea for that matter. Keep in mind, sometimes we all are spirit killers to some degree!. 

The main concept Let’s dissect this so-called demon, well... pardon me for the sarcasm but more and more, the idea killers are more frequent in our society. Basically this man or woman, in an effort to do good (save us from trouble), will kill our moment in a snap with a long train of judgmental bullet points, all based on the odds and not a single one based on the bright side. Now, this will have deep implications in our brains and ultimately, in our ego. Don’t get me wrong, this character impersonated by a dear and near the element to our life, usually a friend, father, sister, wife, etc. has embarked himself in a mission to help us from deception or failure (all good, and none the less noble causes). The "Modus Operandi" is very simple, they will listen… rapidly process all the odds, drop in the mix their broad experience, knowledge, wisdom... to later overly judge the idea to the point is not fun to finish the story anymore. The wild creative Spirit is hurt, if not in agony for a moment; very quickly the spirit has been seen, targeted, and shot while he was blossoming to life. I do understand us as “humans”, need to truly focus our attention on our main objectives (translation: keep your eyes on the ball), don’t get me wrong! everybody needs criticism, personally, I think is rather healthy. At the same time, I think we need to slow down a bit here; kinda learn to enjoy the meal, and not just swallow all along. Believe me, It only takes just 5 minutes to achieve a mental break, and to avoid the impersonation of the so-called “Spirit Killer” (it happens to all of us! including me). We need to bring this person (AKA smart mini Einstein) into perspective, but at the same time, embrace the creativeness in him rather than kill it. The goal is to push him forward in taking the idea to the next level, a leap into the creation process, or we might as well, be the one helping him to abandon the effort all along. 

The challenge for the new Einstein mind (idea inventor) In life, we will always find ourselves among Spirit Killers (again, this is not a problem), usually they are the sweetest and loving creatures we can ever be around, or create deep bonds. I personally think we need to learn something here and FAST! we need to teach ourselves to disconnect some parts of our brain while hanging out with Spirit Killers. The purpose here is to STOP processing some parts of the message while is being delivered (by the Spirit Killers), and on the other hand, embrace other parts of the message after is delivered. This practice will keep us from fooling ourselves in flying too high (avoiding thoughts such as… how good we are, how great our creation is, how the world revolves around us). Furthermore, if we manage to be experts in these practices, our ideas will be fully tied out to ground level, while our ego remaining intact. Hence, our little Einstein will never stop creating, happy as a fly on a picnic day!. 

The Challenge to the Idea Listener (Idea receiver) Hey, I might look like a victim here, but rest assured most of the time I am the Spirit Killer myself!. In my humble personal experience, I think we overly judge things all the time (humans carry that in their DNA). Moreover, I think we naturally want to save the world, with the purpose to ultimately (at least most of us), do some good to others. My advice is to effectively use as much as possible our body features, translation... we have 2 ears and 1 month (got it?). Let's expand the concept in Lyman's terms, we must listen twice as much as we talk (first-hand experience here, this is impossible for me). Rest assured this is a perfectly achievable endeavor, and among all the mentioned odds, I still think this is doable. It just requires extra effort from our part. 

  Conclusion As a free bird in this world, I would say try to be bold and innovative as much as possible. With all your guns, keep up your creativity alive AT ALL TIMES. We all have a Picasso inside (a piece of cake!!! have you seen a Picasso?), we all have a politically correct side, we all have a creative soul, but sadly... we all also lack the ability to let it be. We just need to practice, have in mind our brain is like a muscle so use it (in some cases in a desperate need for a workout), so give it a try! it won't hurt. Now, as an idea listener (potentially a Spirit Killer), we need to slow down... reduce the RPM, and concentrate more in people feelings while we bring them to a ground level (if you have kids, you probably heard crazy explanations for simple stuff already, LOL). Be patient, even the most daunting and daring idea might spark your next breakthrough moment. Marco Frigerio.

The top 10 spam botnets: New and improved

Thanks Blog.techrepublic.com, see full article from here

While doing research for this project, I came across a blog series (first, second, third post) that forced me to rethink. Ranking spam botnets is not as simple as I thought. The blog author, Terry Zink, pointed out that there are several measurement philosophies:

• The number of bot members
• The number of bytes sent
• The number of messages sent

In the grand scheme of things, it may not seem important. But techies like details. Counting the number of bot members or bytes sent is straightforward enough. You would assume that the number of messages would be, too.

Well, it’s not. Botnets are smart enough to create a spam message but address it to a lot of different recipients. That adds another factor when counting messages.

Confused? So am I. To make some sense out of it all, I juggled the different attributes (totally unscientifically, of course) and came up with the following list of the best of the breed. The botnets are arranged in order of spam activity, with the most popular name being listed first:

Note: This article is also available as a download that includes a PDF version and a PowerPoint presentation.

1: Grum (Tedroo)

Grum is the future for spam botnets. It’s a kernel-mode rootkit and thus hard to detect. It’s also sneaky, infecting files used by Autorun registries. That guarantees it will be activated. This botnet is of special interest to researchers. It’s relatively small, only 600,000 members. Yet it accounts for almost 25 percent, or 40 billion spam-emails a day.

Grum focuses on pharmaceutical spam. You know the kind. There must be money in this, as most spam botnets are involved with it to some degree.

2: Bobax (Kraken/Oderoor/Hacktool.spammer)

Bobax confuses botnet hunters, being somewhat related to the Kraken botnet. Recently, Bobax went through a rewrite. The authors converted command and control traffic to HTTP, making it more difficult to block and trace.

Right now, Bobax has only 100,000 members, yet it produces 27 billion spam messages a day. That’s 15 percent. Or more impressively, 1,400 spam email messages per bot per minute. Bobax appears to be a botnet for hire, as the type of spam varies.

3: Pushdo (Cutwail/Pandex)

Pushdo started at the same time as Storm, in 2007. Storm is all but gone. But Pushdo is still going strong, sending out approximately 19 billion spam email messages a day from one and a half million bots. Pushdo is the downloader, which gains access to the victim computer. It then downloads Cutwail, the spamming software.

The Pushdo/Cutwail botnet spews spam with a wide variety of subject matter, including pharmaceuticals, online casinos, phishing schemes, and links to malware-laced Web sites.

4: Rustock (Costrat)

Rustock is another survivor. It was almost destroyed when McColo was shuttered in 2008. But it’s back and currently the largest botnet, with almost two million bots. Before McColo, Rustock’s trademark was to generate huge amounts of spam, then go dormant for several months. Today, Rustock’s signature is to deliver spam only from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. EST (GM-5) daily.

Rustock is also known for forging legitimate email newsletters using image files. Image spam is undetectable by most filtering software. In addition, Rustock does the usual pharmaceutical and Twitter-based spam to the tune of 17 billion spam messages a day.

5: Bagle (Beagle/Mitglieder/Lodeight)

Bagle is an interesting botnet because of its industrious author. Since 2004, it has gone through hundreds of iterations. Two years ago, the developer decided to start making money, using Bagle to cultivate and sell email address databases.

Now, Bagle bots act as relay proxies, forwarding spam email messages to their final destination. Bagle has at most 500,000 bots, but it still moves 14 billion pieces of spam each day.

6: Mega-D (Ozdok)

Mega-D is famous — or infamous, depending on your point of view. In November 2009, researchers at FireEye were able to shut the botnet down by registering its command and control domains ahead of the botmasters. But the malware is programmed to constantly generate new domains, allowing the botmasters to eventually regain control.

Of the top 10 botnets, Mega-D is the smallest, consisting of 50,000 members. That’s not very many, considering it pushes out 11 billion pieces of spam daily. It’s second only to Bobax, when considering spam per bot per minute. Mega-D’s spam consists of advertisements for an online pharmacy and, of course, male-enhancement drugs.

7: Maazben

Maazben has been around only since June 2009. Yet it’s of special interest to researchers. Maazben is the first botnet that can use either proxy-based or template-based bots. Spammers prefer proxy-based bots because the spam source remains hidden. But proxy-based bots don’t work if the infected computer is behind a NAT device.

The new technique must be working. Maazben is the fastest-growing botnet of the top 10, increasing membership five percent in one month. With 300,000 bots, Maazben spreads two and a half billion casino-related spam messages per day.

8: Xarvester (Rlsloup/Pixoliz)

Xarvester came into the picture after the McColo shutdown. Researchers feel the Xarvester botnet picked up a few customers from the closure. Researchers also see many similarities between Xarvester and the infamous Srizbi botnet, one of the botnets affected by the closing of the McColo data center.

Currently, the Xarvester botnet contains 60,000 members, sending out approximately two and a half billion spam messages a day. The email messages could contain spam for pharmaceuticals, fake diplomas, replica watches, and Russian-specific spam.

9: Donbot (Buzus)

The Donbot botnet is unique. It is one of the first botnets to use URL shortening, in an attempt to hide malicious links in the spam email. The thought is to increase the likelihood of someone clicking on the link. Donbot also seems to be divided into multiple individually run networks, each one pushing different types of spam.

Donbot has 100,000 members and sends out about 800 million spam emails a day. Spam content varies from weight loss drugs to stock pump-and-dump to debt settlement offers.

10: Gheg (Tofsee/Mondera)

Three things stand out about the number 10 botnet. First, almost 85 percent of the spam from it originates in South Korea. Second, Gheg is one of the few botnets that encrypt traffic from the command and control servers using a nonstandard SSL connection on port 443.

Third, Gheg has options in how it sends spam email. It can act as a conventional proxy spambot. Or it can route spam messages through the victim’s Internet provider’s mail server. Gheg has 60,000 members and pushes out about 400 million spam emails daily, concentrating on pharmaceutical spam.

Grand total

Daren Lewis of Symantec keeps tabs on many of the botnets for MessageLabs and has come up with some startling numbers. Here are the overall statistics:

• 80 percent of all spam is sent by these 10 botnets.
• These 10 botnets send 135 billion spam messages a day.
• Five million computers belong to the 10 botnets.

The statistics are probably worse now, as I do not see any reduction in any of the spam filtering houses.

Final thoughts

Well, there you have it. I wouldn’t get rid of spam filtering devices or services just yet. To make matters worse, I keep close tabs on anti-spam research and do not see any solutions in the near future.

I'm not the author of this article, so Thanks Blog.techrepublic.com, see full article from here

Privately Branded Email

Original post extracted from manwaringweb.com (Many thanks!)

I'm always a little surprised when I encounter business professionals who are using email addresses provided by their internet service provider (q.com, msn.com) or from other free widely used email providers such as gmail or hotmail.

Using a privately branded email address (yourname@yourdomainname.com) has some great advantages and is very simple to setup and can be completely free.

Portability

The best reason for branding your own email? So you can take it with you. When I first encountered the internet I began using the free email address my ISP provided to me. After switching ISPs a handful of times - and having to get new email addresses each time - I had enough. If you own your own domain name, you can take your email anywhere you want; switch your ISP, you can even switch your email provider - it doesn't matter. If you own your domain name, you never have to change you email address again.

Professionalism

Your company, even your personal image, will appear more stable, more professional, with a branded email address. Everytime someone sees your email address in a message, on a business card, etc. it will help re-enforce your brand - not someone else's.

How to get there

Getting your privately branded email doesn't have to be expensive. When approached for help we usually recommend most small and medium sized businesses start with Google Apps. Google Apps has a free edition which will allow you to create up to 50 free mailboxes. For additional mailboxes, email and phone support from Google or for premium features you can upgrade to a paid edition. With Google Apps you basically get privately branded Gmail, plus access to a host of other free Google Apps such as online document and spreadsheets and shared calendaring.

Setting up Google Apps can be a little difficult if you are not familiar with DNS (domain name system).

For those who prefer a completely hands off setup we can obtain and manage your domain name for $15/year and setup your domain with Google Apps for a one time minimal setup charge.

Original post from http://www.manwaringweb.com/blog/post/2009/02/04/Private-Branded-Email.aspx