Charles on… anything that comes along

Ho hum, another comment spam storm is going on while you read this (all, hopefully, getting blocked).

One of the Trojan-compromised PCs being used to do this is at the IP address 195.245.247.155, and has been used since at least November 14 to try to post to this blog about online poker.

Who owns that PC? According to the RIPE lookup, it’s BIS Ltd - www.bis-internet.co.uk, which says of itself that it established its reputation as a supplier of high performance Enterprise Infrastructure solutions to major corporate players in insurance, financial, legal and media business communities.. It seems to be looking after this IP block for Mindshareworld, if I’m reading the RIPE data correctly.

I contacted them a day or two ago about this spam, suggesting they should lock down that PC, as it might be being used also for anything, since it’s clearly being used to send stuff out over the Web to my blog. Perhaps the login details of the person using it are going to online-poker too? Or their banking details?

No response from them, and the spam continues. So I’ll do as I said I would, and name them here. Hello, BIS people! You’ve got a PC on the network you manage that you aren’t controlling! Care to do something now?

Update Weds Dec 1: Turns out BIS is the ISP and Mindshareworld (or Mindshare) is the offending company, which is running a completely open proxy that spammers are bouncing their junk off. What does Mindshare do? They’re an advertising/PR/etc company. I suggested they might like to become better internet citizens by closing down their machine there, or at least securing it.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Comment spam: and now the firestorm (16 September 2004; score: 69.25%)
• Spamming begins at home (4 August 2004; score: 43.49%)
• Ooh that Jemima Kiss, don't annoy her (17 March 2005; score: 40.2%)

Some people have been wondering about who’s going to succeed me on The Independent writing about technology for the news section.

My understanding: nobody. They aren’t advertising the job (not even internally), three months after I handed in my resignation and one week before I leave. By contrast, when the deputy picture editor resigned, an internal vacancy notice went out within the week.

You can draw either of two conclusions from this: 1) everyone is familiar enough with technology that it doesn’t need special treatment, or a specialist to cover it 2) it’s more important to get a general reporter to cover news than to replace a specialist. Interesting to note though that after next week there’s nobody on the “qualities” apart from the FT with a technology news brief.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• What Dave discovered (7 July 2004; score: 0%)
• Another hour, another flaw (7 July 2004; score: 0%)
• Keep the mice pedalling! (7 July 2004; score: 0%)