The state of web hosting on the Net

BANGALORE: Freeloader on the Web is dead after the ISP (Hypermart) terminated my account citing 'excessive bandwidth usage.' This despite insisting on credit card details to cover such an eventuality.

That Hypermart now has nearly 2 million customers could have a lot to do with their arbitrariness. Especially as I was a free user (who permitted the ISP to recover hosting costs with pop-up and -under advertising). The first victims of any domain cleanup are the folks who don't pay. From mid-1997 until a few months into 2003 I had no complaint about service. And would promote Hypermart as a great free host. I revise that opinion: they're another soulless big company who doesn't care.

In all fairness, the signs were there but I chose to ignore them. These included server transients where folders failed to list, data transfers interrupted midway. And lots of hardware upgrade activity. I even had to switch from standard FTP to the slower passive mode (like a web browser) to transfer files.

I'm going to miss my Freeloader Archives circa 1997-98: all that remained after my publishers lost the early writings. As well as several software keys and other interesting documents I had collected. But I'm already moving on. And will shortly have my own permanent location. Along with my email ID,

look at my website when you get the time.

The week doesn't get any better. Blogger.com which was recently sold to Google has started experiencing transients and timeouts as well. One of my custom templates crashed inexplicably. And I'm unable to often access my blogs using a remote

tool like wbloggar.So before Blogger too becomes unavailable, I'm moving my blogs elsewhere.

There are several excellent Weblog (blog) tools available. And you can find them all in one list. Some are server-side solutions requiring ASP, or more commonly, PHP with either Perl (CGI) or a MySQL database. Or you can use Fahim Farook's Blog software.

The Bugbear virus that's making a comeback

along with the Sobig.C worm was over-hyped. Part of this viral resurgence can be attributed

to the (eventual) fusion of virus distribution using spam software. Read

more TARGET='_freel1'>here on spam-sending malware.

The latest Bugbear (aka W32/Bugbear.B-mm, W32/Kijmo-mm, W32/Shamur-mm,

W32/Badtrans.D-mm) variant opens port 1080 (used typically by SOCKS) to

allow remote users to connect to and manipulate affected systems. It also

terminates antivirus and firewall software. And includes its own SMTP engine

to send email containing an HREF='http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/sec

urity/bulletin/MS01-020.asp' TARGET='_freel1'>exploit that allows

attachments to automatically execute when messages are viewed/previewed in

Outlook/Outlook Express.

If you've been affected by a virus, instead of struggling with the Windows

Registry. Use an automated tool like the free Trend Micro HREF='http://www.trendmicro.com/download/tsc.asp' TARGET='_freel1'>System

Cleaner.

And according to Chip Rosenthal (and his cat), 'improved' integration between Outlook Express and Hotmail using the WebDAV (Distributed Authoring and Versioning) protocol. Seems spammers have cracked this interface and using it to programmatically generate spam!

According to Chip, of 25 spams into his Hotmail Inbox, '2 were transmitted by web form and the rest by the DAV exploit: a 2200% increase!' I can't corroborate Chip's figures my account only receives mail from Contacts.

You can tell you've been hit by a spam generated with cracked into code if the mail header contains a line like:

Received: from 202.144.44.81 by bay3-dav91.bay3.hotmail.com with DAV; Sat, 07 Jun 2003 23:33:24 +0000

The 'with DAV' indicates the mail was transmitted to Hotmail using DAV instead of the Web interface.

But before I go a tip to a great, free (for non-commercial use) antivirus program. The Avast! antivirus software beats AVG flat out. It free version includes a customizable On-Access scanner with its own interface to control Internet

Mail, Outlook/Exchange (if installed) and standard Shield. And a separate VRDB (Virus Recovery Database) to check file integrity and roll-back infected files to pre-infection state.

The only real difference between the free and Professional editions, is you can control scanner settings. Avast! Home edition has taken over my virus protection where PC-cillin 2000 left off. And I'm not sure if I want to go the Trend Micro route again.

G Menon href='mailto:seeol

freeloader@Ph&

#114;eaker.net?su&#

98;ject=blogback'

>Click Here to Email Me

These views belong to the author and do not neccesarily reflect the views of CIOL