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Issue 2 - Darwinian Email Award

Permessa
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IN THE OCTOBER 2009 ISSUE:
- Email Policies in the Age of DAOS
- Cash for Software Clunkers
- Permessa IM Archiver Secures Sametime
- Ask the Technical Guru

 
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Darwinian Email Award
Hackers Break Into Email For $10,000 Price

As a promotional gimmick, StrongWebmail CEO Darren Berkovitz's Web offered a $10,000 prize to anyone who could break into his email account. He even gave them the account username and password because he believed that the voice-based identification technology sold by its parent company, Telesign,would protect him.

Well, it took only days for the hackers to break in and claim the prize. The hackers found the Web flaw within a minute, Secure Science chief scientist Lance James told IDG News, and then spent about six hours perfecting their attack.

"They did it using an XSS script that took advantage of a vulnerability in the backend webmail program," StrongWebmail said in a statement. StrongWebmail said it was "not deterred" by the contest's quick conclusion and would be launching a new competition once this bug was fixed, IDG reported. "We won't rest until we have created the most secure email in the world," the company said.

SOURCE: Death By Email Blog.


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