Security Park confirms something I suspected a couple of weeks ago:

A new form of spam disguised as an Adobe Picture Document Format (PDF) attachment has been reported. The spam takes on the appearance of a legitimate business email containing an attached PDF file.

The PDF features the file name ‘username_report.pdf’ - the username in the file name is the same as the email recipient’s name (taken from their email address). The personalisation of the attachment file name makes it appear more legitimate.

The new spam technique was first used in a recent pump ‘n dump spam outbreak that promoted a German company’s stock. According to the Marshal TRACE team, we can now expect to see ongoing use of PDF attachments to communicate spam messages.

“Spammers are struggling to find ways to fool spam filters and get their messages into people’s inboxes,” said Bradley Anstis, Director of Product Management, Marshal. “Using a PDF file as the vehicle for the spam message is an attempt to do just that, as spammers believe that many anti-spam solutions largely ignore PDF files.

“As we recently reported, pump ‘n dump spam has declined dramatically and part of the reason for this is overuse of this method. Users are more savvy and can more readily identify a financial scam. With the recent PDF spam outbreak, the spammers have attempted to add credibility and legitimacy to their messages in an attempt to fool users,” said Anstis.

“The fact that the message contains a PDF attachment, which is a very common business-related file format, is designed to lower the recipient’s suspicions that the message might be spam. We are expecting to see a lot more of PDF spam. The recent pump ‘n dump spam case promoting the German company’s stocks marks the beginning.”

According to Anstis, in the past, spammers avoided this kind of spamming method because attaching file types like PDFs greatly increased the size of the message. Historically spammers used their own servers to send out spam and were inclined to keep the spam size small, enabling them to send out more messages.

Now with the widespread use of zombie networks and spambots, the spammers are less concerned with the size of the message. The spammers have tens of thousands of infected PCs at their command and are able to move large volumes of spam of this type.

At least it’s not a virus, though with PDFs, it’s easy enough to embed a URL that’ll go to a virus-laden site.

I don’t envy much, but I lurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrve the inventor if teh interweb’s LCD footprint.

Al Gore still needs to work on curtailing all that “dead tree version” media on his desk.

Via BoingBoing:

Fair(y) Use Tale: AMAZING video cuts up Disney to explain copyright

Bucknell prof Eric Faden has produced the most amazing video mashup I’ve ever seen: “A Fair(y) Use Tale” cuts together thousands of extremely short clips from dozens of Disney cartoons, lifting indivudal words and short phrases to spell out an articulate, funny, and thoroughly educational lesson on how copyright works. This is the most subversive and hilarious use of Disney material I’ve ever seen — and there’s even a really smart chapter about why Faden used Disney material to make his film. This should be required viewing in every K-12 classroom in the country.

Link to:

• Coral Cache link to MP4 download
• Stanford page
• another mirror

For your immediate gratification, while it lasts:

Just realized that I really have no business commuting 2 miles to work by car except when I know I’m going to need to move stuff bigger than a breadbasket that day.

Walking is too slow and I really don’t like getting “dead arm” from shlepping my laptop, books and other stuff.

I live in Los Angeles and the notion of a big wet spot on my back from using a backpack isn’t appealing, either.

Is it safe to just get a rear bike rack and bungee-cord my laptop in a padded case? Any bicycle commuters out there with tips.

Yeah, I could go full-metal-bike geek and drop $130 on a set of Arkel briefcase bags but maybe there’s a cheaper solution that would work? I almost want some kind of hybrid pannier where I can take a bag of groceries on one side and my laptop bag on the other.