what is spam?
Are you getting emails that try and sell you all sorts of stuff? do you have a blog, and you are getting 400+ comments a day on your blog with a whole bunch of links to some website?
I think you are suffering from Spam my friend. So, what is spam
Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send — most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.
There are two main types of spam, and they have different effects on Internet users. Cancellable Usenet spam is a single message sent to 20 or more Usenet newsgroups. (Through long experience, Usenet users have found that any message posted to so many newsgroups is often not relevant to most or all of them.) Usenet spam is aimed at “lurkers”, people who read newsgroups but rarely or never post and give their address away. Usenet spam robs users of the utility of the newsgroups by overwhelming them with a barrage of advertising or other irrelevant posts. Furthermore, Usenet spam subverts the ability of system administrators and owners to manage the topics they accept on their systems.Email spam targets individual users with direct mail messages. Email spam lists are often created by scanning Usenet postings, stealing Internet mailing lists, or searching the Web for addresses. Email spams typically cost users money out-of-pocket to receive. Many people - anyone with measured phone service - read or receive their mail while the meter is running, so to speak. Spam costs them additional money. On top of that, it costs money for ISPs and online services to transmit spam, and these costs are transmitted directly to subscribers.
One particularly nasty variant of email spam is sending spam to mailing lists (public or private email discussion forums.) Because many mailing lists limit activity to their subscribers, spammers will use automated tools to subscribe to as many mailing lists as possible, so that they can grab the lists of addresses, or use the mailing list as a direct target for their attacks.
Hacking a website
Sop you interested about hacking websites? you want to know what to do to prevent hacking of your own website? Have a read.
I believe that by understanding what is done and how things are done, you can use that knowledge to prevent damage to your websites due to website hacking.
There are two types of website hacking:
1. Hacking to break into password protected sections of the website. (Often Illegal)
2. Hacking so that you can modify or deform a website. NOTE: Criminal Offence
Website Hacking is not uncommon. It is simply trying to break into a site unauthorised. Webmasters can use encryption to prevent this. However, as most website programmers do not use encryption their websites are easy targets. Methods of protection include javascript, asp, php and cgi, but most other server-side languages can also be used. I will show you how to hack websites which use javascript protection.
Javascript protection has never been secure, if you are looking at the source to find the password to client-side protection, you will probably not have any problem finding the password unless it is encrypted. Follow the steps below so that you can understand the basics of hacking websites.
Recently 2 dummy bank sites were launched, the first totally insecure and the second was secured with a firewall. 8 weeks later, both sites were checked. The first without a firewall, averaged a hacking attempt every four minutes, the second, with a firewall, averaged an attack every hour. This just goes to prove how malicious some hackers are.
On this website you will find nothing of such a malicious nature. Building positive white hat hacking skills is a good thing and we encourage it, as do we helping you protect your own site, but bad hat hackers should find a better hobby.
In some cases people actually hire people to try and hack their website to secure it more. The Hacker, doing the website hacking, will turn around and tell the people how he got in. and those people will then do something to prevent the next person to hack their website.
Some ways in witch you can help yourself and protect your website from getting hacked.
1. Use a no-right-click script.
This prevents easy copying of pictures and easily viewing the source. In this way you will be slowing the hacked down, because he cannot see the way your website was built. Note: This can be circumvented by using Javascript.
2. Use frames.
This prevents viewing of the source from the top of the page. Note: This can be circumvented by using browser history.
3. Encrypt the frames page.
Encryption can stop hackers altogether. By using multiple encryption programs sources become unreadable. Note: Even encryption can be beaten.
So there you have it. How someone can hack your website, and a few steps you can take to ensure a more secure website.
Hope it helps.
Robert
Hacking 101 how it gets done.
For many of us Hacking is a real threat. Probably for all of us.
Hackers state that they are only after information and they want to test their skills. This is true, because we live in the information age. Where info is king. Information could be anything from the names of your staff to your bank account details and pin. Varying from different danger levels.
Getting the information you want could be a simple task or a very complex one. Usernames are easier than passwords, bank account number is easy to get, but not the pin number ect
I used to think that Hacking was out there and could never affect me. I was wrong. I recently learned how hacking usernames and Passwords for adsl works. All that you need is an IP address scanner, a mouse and a little know how. First of all, IP scanners are great tools when working with networks. It scans the network for A range of IP addresses, and spits out a whole bunch of information about it. You can also setup these scanners to scan IP addresses on the internet and tell it to look for open Ports on the internet. Basically a “door” for traffic to go through.
Once the scan has run and you found a whole bunch of IP addresses that are live (connected) and have the Port 80 open, you can punch in that IP address into your web browser and it will take you to the login screen of that router/computer or just take you to a website. (if you find the right one, you get to the router login screen
In my travels and my experience with working on the internet and networks. I found that the majority of people don’t change their default usernames and passwords on their routers. 
I make a point of doing that
So once the Ip address is in the browser, and you can see the router login screen, try the default username and password for that router. If it works, you have just logged into someone elses adsl router.
ok, but the password is hidden.
Once you have logged in successfully, you go to the account setup. It will then show you the username and the password will be a bunch of stars: **********
What you do then: Right click on the page somewhere, and click on page source. That will then give you the source code of the user interface for that page. Then press Control + F to bring up the search menu. Type in there the username that you just found on the page. eg: user@isp.com
That will then take you to the area where the username is in. Just below that you will see something that looks like this: <password= “whateverthepasswordis” > That will be the password for that account.
You then place that username and password in your router/modem and hit the connect button.
After that you can be called a hacker and do things illegally.
So, to bring me to the point of my post. When you have somebody install your internet for you, or if you do it yourself. Remember to change your default username and password
thanx for listening.
you might enjoy my post About Firewalls
Robert
Wonderfull world of Firewalls
Firewalls make it possible to filter incoming and outgoing traffic that flows through your system. A firewall can use one or more sets of “rules” to inspect the network packets as they come in or go out of your network connections and either allows the traffic through or blocks it. The rules of a firewall can inspect one or more characteristics of the packets, including but not limited to the protocol type, the source or destination host address, and the source or destination port.
Firewalls can filter traffic and block anything you don’t want on your network. you can block Spam Sites, Facebook, dodgy sites, it can even pick up on the pictures on websites and block those for you aswell. You can also set up a firewall to only allow traffic to certain sites. So you could block EVERYTHING and only allow the computers on your network to access your company website.
I use a firewall called Clarckconnect. With that I can monitor the bandwidth usage on my network, I can see who visited what websites, and How much data was used on that website. I also use my Firewall as an FTP server to store data on, sothat I can get to that data from anywhere. I can set up remote access to my firewall and do work on my computer at home while I’m sitting in mug and bean.
Is it still safe then? yes. Firewalls use https protocols witch means its a secure protocol where you have to log into. Even more, The firewall uses a specific port (set by user). so Without knowing what your DNS name is or the public I P address for your firewall and not knowing what port to use. No one is able to get into your firewall or network.
Some points to what A firewall can do.
In practice, many firewalls use two or more of these techniques in parallel
