feed on feeds - 2013/03/26 - items 0 to 15

Storbritanniens tidigare utrikesminister David Miliband, som 2010 utmanade sin bror Ed om partiledarposten i Labour, lämnar politiken.

Den baskiska separatiströrelsen ETA:s tidigare befälhavare Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina har dömts till ännu ett långt fängelsestraff i Paris.

En 26-årig man som misstänks ha styrt sexhandel i Göteborg med kvinnor från Bulgarien har häktats i sin frånvaro och blir internationellt efterlyst.

Following up on Kevin Listons earlier post [How your Webhosting Account is Getting Hacked], there are some forms of abuse that can affect your hosted web site without anyone actually getting shell access. ISC reader Mark contacted us after he noticed a significant load on his Apache web server. Closer investigation revealed that his box was sending email like crazy. Even closer investigation revealed that the email being sent was one of those fake Wedding Invitation phishes that have been quite frequent this week.

Mark responded with a quick fix to stop the bleeding - he simply changed the permissions on the mail spool directory so that the web server user could no longer write to the folder, resulting in a tell-tale list of evidence in the Apache log:

[Tue Mar 26 01:05:49 2013] [error] [client 220.246.X.Y] postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/548245.15300: Permission denied

[Tue Mar 26 01:05:49 2013] [error] [client 92.144.X.Y] postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/583810.16922: Permission denied

[Tue Mar 26 01:05:50 2013] [error] [client 190.27.X.Y] postdrop: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/54262.16780: Permission denied

The spammers were connecting from all over the place - more than 50 different IPs were seen in a matter of seconds. The quick fix gave Mark the time to hunt for the culprit - a PHP contact form that was configured improperly, and allowed mail relaying. Moral or the story, if the logs look like your web server is acting as a spam relay, it probably is. Keep a keen eye on those logs, and be careful with functionality that allows site visitors to bounce off your server, be it by sending email via a contact form, or by triggering queries through your server that run against a different site, like for example whois lookups. Where there is opportunity, abuse wont be far behind.

(c) SANS Internet Storm Center. http://isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

På många håll går det inte att använda mobilen - trots att operatörernas täckningskartor säger att det ska fungera.

De boende i Örnsköldsvik måste koka sitt dricksvatten.

En 62-årig man som hotat att dränka grannens barn i en badbassäng döms till villkorlig dom och samhällstjänst.

AlphaWolf_HK writes "In what I see as a refreshing change, T-Mobile, the fourth largest carrier in the U.S., has made sweeping changes to its service, ending both phone subsidies and service contracts. Its CEO said, 'Here's the deal: If we suck this month, go somewhere else. If we're good, stay with us.' As part of that change, the new base plan will include unlimited access, including voice, text, and data. Data will be restricted to edge speeds after 500GB with no overage costs, but can be upgraded to 2.5GB for $10, or unlimited for $20. Portable Wi-Fi hotspot usage is also unrestricted for no additional cost. In addition, LTE services just went live in eight markets. As is already standard practice with T-Mobile, you are free to bring your own device. To keep customers from having to front the full cost of the phone with unsubsidized plans, they'll let people pay off phones in installments. They're also getting the iPhone 5 next month for $650."