Werblog: August 2003 Archives

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August 22, 2003

Guess what else is decentralizing?

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Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Weighing in at 576 pages...

So the FCC has finally released its Triennial Review Order revising terms for interconnection between incumbent local phone companies and competitors. Let the litigation begin! (Actually, the litigation has been going on for seven years, but this order will extend it for many more.)

Hopefully now the FCC can turn its attention to a more important competitive issue: preventing states from killing off voice over IP.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thanks Dave

Wow. No doubt due in large part to a link from Dave Winer. my post the other day about the SoBig worm is currently #13 on Popdex.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 9:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 21, 2003

How big is it?

BBC: "At one point every one in 17 e-mails intercepted by security firm MessageLabs was infected with the Sobig F virus."

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 2:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 20, 2003

The Day Email Died?

Between 10:45pm last night and 6am this morning, I received 1,470 pieces of spam (a run rate of nearly 5,000 per day). Most of them were from the SoBig worm, which seems to be the worst yet. And as far as I can tell, it's still getting worse.

I wonder if this is the last straw that will convince people to move in droves to challenge/response or whitelist mechanisms, as I argued last year. And I'd be surprised if these volumes don't overload mail servers at major ISPs. We're seeing the closest thing yet to the Morris worm that shut down the Net in 1988.

The good news is that my lovingly tuned filtering guantlet, including the rule-based SpamAssassin, the Bayesian POPfile, and a couple dozen hand-coded rules, has held up well. All 1,470 of the messages were auto-routed to the trash. The bad news is that, with this many spams, it's impractical to check manually for false positives (good email accidentally deleted as spam). My overall filter accuracy is well above 99%, but I'm still seeing occasional false positives (maybe two per week) when I search for them.

We have to confront the reality: either email is broken, Microsoft's email software is broken, or those two statements are the same. If it's the middle statement, Microsoft and other vendors can close holes and improve filtering in their products. Email itself isn't going to change. It's too widely deployed. I still think a combination of steps will tame the spam epidemic, but we're not there yet.

UPDATE: I should mention that SoBig hasn't been such a big problem for me personally because I use Eudora for my email. I'm just on the receiving end of lots of worm messages from Outlook Express users.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 11, 2003

At the beach

I'm relaxing. Or something like that. See ya next week.

Posted by Kevin Werbach at 6:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 8, 2003

Six Degrees of Email

A study
by Duncan Watts of Columbia University has shown that the famous "six degrees of separation" phenomenon holds for email relationships. Though apparently the researchers didn't find super-connected "hubs" ot be as prominent as they expected. (via Nova Spivack)

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