Block Spam from Your Network

Everyone, with the exception of the spammers, hates junk mail. Spam not only wastes your time, it can be a means of delivering malware and various infections to your computer. One of the goals of MailWasher Pro is to allow the user to preview the email prior to downloading. Consider this as viewing the mail at the server level instead of handling it while it is on your machine. That is an added level of security.

Other programs claim to screen your email and filter it for you. The problem (and the danger) of those systems is that you may lose some of the mail that you want. Legitimate email may be filtered and eliminated. That does not happen with MailWasher Pro. You can have a brief glance at the mail at the server level and eliminate what you do not want. It’s easy and it’s an elegant way of handling the spam problem.

It is possible to set up friends lists, blacklists, and filters. If some spammer is mail “bombing” your account, for example, MailWasher Pro can handle this easily. MailWasher Pro includes a heuristic virus scanner. And it is possible to bounce the email to make your account look like it is an inactive account. These are just some of the anti-spam tools that MailWasher Pro offers. There are many more features but let’s just say that this is an excellent security program.

How to Extract Links from Download Sites

Links are pieces of text that make a web browser useful. Some pages have a lot of links sitting on there. You might want to extract the link, and not all the other garbage. There’s an easy way to do this, you know. You can grab all of the links quickly and easily.

Easy Extract Me frees you from having to extract links one by one on a page. Grab them all at the same time! Copying links one-by-one into your download manager or viewing the source code of the page (and thus deleting unnecessary junk to leave the links there) is a huge time-waste. Save yourself the hassle, and just use Easy Extract Me.

Simply copy the URL of any web page onto the site. The free service will go and extract all of the links for you. All you have to do is sit there and let it do the work. It doesn’t get any easier than this!

'Gumblar' attack explodes

A complex new malware attack is setting infection records and raising serious alarms in the security community.

Known unofficially as 'Gumblar' for one of the attack domains, the malware uses prolific attack methods and carries a dangerous payload.

Researchers say that the attack spreads by compromising web sites and injecting malicious JavaScript code into certain components of the site. A victim runs the risk of the JavaScript attack simply by visiting the infected pages.

Once a site is compromised, the malware alters access credentials and folder permissions to allow an attacker a 'back door' for entry to the site even when the user has changed passwords. The malicious code is also altered in slight ways, preventing administrators from automatically searching out and deleting the scripts.

Because the infection is so hard to get rid of, researchers say that Gumblar has enjoyed far more success than previous malware attacks.

First detected in late March, researchers thought that the attacks had been halted by mid-April when Google delisted the offending sites.

However, a new variant of the attack arose early this month and has been spreading rapidly. Security firm ScanSafe estimates that Gumblar attacks have jumped some 188 per cent over the past week alone, and Sophos credits Gumblar with up to 42 per cent of all malware infections in the past seven days.

"The gross infection rate is exceptional, especially this late in the game," said Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe. "Basically, it has been enjoying a free reign."

The payload is also believed to be highly dangerous. Landesman said that the malware intercepts web traffic such as Google search requests, and redirects it to fraudulent results. This allows the attackers to collect referral fees, and places the user at risk of further infection.

The malware also contains botnet controllers and is programmed to collect all FTP permissions on the infected systems, allowing Gumblar to infect any sites which the user administrates, further fostering the spread to new domains.

COMPUTERS

A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a list of instructions.

Although mechanical examples of computers have existed throughout history, the first resembling a modern computer were developed in the mid-20th century (1940–1945). The first electronic computers were the size of a large room, consuming as much power as several hundred modern personal computers (PC). Modern computers based on tiny integrated circuits are millions to billions of times more capable than the early machines, and occupy a fraction of the space. Simple computers are small enough to fit into a wristwatch, and can be powered by a watch battery. Personal computers in their various forms are icons of the Information Age, what most people think of as a "computer", but the embedded computers found in devices ranging from fighter aircraft to industrial robots, digital cameras, and toys are the most numerous.

The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile, distinguishing them from calculators. The Church–Turing thesis is a mathematical statement of this versatility: any computer with a certain minimum capability is, in principle, capable of performing the same tasks that any other computer can perform. Therefore computers ranging from a personal digital assistant to a supercomputer are all able to perform the same computational tasks, given enough time and storage capacity.

Posted by IT Software.

SOFTWARES

Free software or software libre is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with minimal restrictions only to ensure that further recipients can also do these things. In practice, for software to be distributed as free software, the human readable form of the program (the "source code") must be made available to the recipient along with a notice granting the above permissions. Such a notice is a "free software licence", or, in theory, could be a notice saying that the source code is released into the public domain.

The free software movement was conceived in 1983 by Richard Stallman to make these freedoms available to every computer user. From the late 1990s onward, alternative terms for free software came into use. "Open source software" is the most common such alternative term. Others include "software libre", "free, libre and open-source software" ("FOSS", or, with "libre", "FLOSS"). The antonym of free software is "proprietary software" or non-free software.

Free software is distinct from "freeware" which is proprietary software made available free of charge. Users usually cannot study, modify, or redistribute freeware.

Since free software may be freely redistributed, it generally is available at little or no cost. Free software business models are usually based on adding value such as support, training, customization, integration, or certification. At the same time, some business models which work with proprietary software are not compatible with free software, such as those that depend on a user having no choice but to pay for a licence in order to lawfully use a software product.

Posted by IT Software.

INTERNET

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available servers and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory. The same connection allows that computer to send information to servers on the network; that information is in turn accessed and potentially modified by a variety of other interconnected computers. A majority of widely accessible information on the Internet consists of inter-linked hypertext documents and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW). Computer users typically manage sent and received information with web browsers; other software for users' interface with computer networks includes specialized programs for electronic mail, online chat, file transfer and file sharing.

The movement of information in the Internet is achieved via a system of interconnected computer networks that share data by packet switching using the standardized Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and other technologies.