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Written by: Jeffrey Olsen

What is one food product where no one ever asks for it and is most likely to be pushed aside, but might be the most talked about technological acronym in today’s computer driven world? You guessed it, SPAM. Who would have thought America’s first canned meat product created over 81 years ago by Jay C. Hormel, son of Hormel food products founder George A. Hormel would be associated with 130,000 complaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission per day in the Twenty First Century (www.ftc.gov)? Spam, also known as “junk mail”, can be best defined as unsolicited electronic messages sent to recipients who would not otherwise have chosen to receive it. Most forms of spam are sent as a form of commercial advertising promoting illegal or offensive content. With more and more consumers and business’s relying on the electronic form of mail everyday, we have all experienced first hand the growing problem of spam and how it affects our daily lives both at home and at the workplace.

You might be wondering what the various techniques spammers use to send out millions of spam messages per day without getting caught. There is approximately 20 different methods spammers use but I will only touch on the top five most relevant methods used today.

1. Use of offshore ISP (Internet Service Providers) – Spammers use offshore ISP’s to transmit their spam or host spam websites because these operators usually charge less money and are usually harder to trace back to because they are often hosted in third world countries

2. Transfer of mail via open proxies or what is known as “Zombies”- What spammers do is implant proxy software on computers and mail servers that use this software to send spam via remote control. This method is popular because they can take advantage of the victim’s existing infrastructure to transmit spam without paying for these services. This method is also extremely difficult to trace back to the sender. In most cases, when the spam is traced, the results the investigators receive show that the spam is being sent from the individual or company that had their infrastructure taken over remotely.

3. Fake “to” and “from” addresses – Spammers use fictitious or stolen e-mail addresses in the visible headers of their messages. To the recipient, the message looks legitimate and the user is more apt to open the message they received.

4. Embedding recipients e-mail address in hyperlinks or “web bugs” – They put your e-mail address into a URL contained within the message body of the e-mail. The result is that the spammers get a signal back that you personally opened the message. It is useless to send mail to non-functioning e-mail addresses because it is a waste of bandwidth and resources. E-mails that are sent to non-functioning addresses that get bounced back to the sender can also be a path back to the originator of the message creating additional problems to the individual who sent the message.

5. Dictionary Attacks – Dictionary attacks a domain’s mail exchanger by continuously sending messages that may or may not be delivered. What this does is, it collects a list of working e-mail addresses within a particular domain. Spammers use this trick to verify the existence of e-mail addresses. This method also allows spammers to develop a list of targeted addresses allowing visiting mail-sending servers to send thousands of messages in a very short amount of time

The originators of these spam marketing campaigns do sometimes get caught. On May 30, 2007, a 27 year old man who has been labeled as one of the worlds most prolific spammers was arrested on charges of using networks comprised of “zombie” computers to send out millions of spam e-mail messages. According to MSNBC.com, a federal grand jury returned a 35 count indictment against Robert Soloway charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. The impact Soloway has made on businesses, individuals, and local, state and federal government institutions has been extensive. Many business owners and individuals face the impact of their reputations being damaged when it appeared spam was originating from their organizations computers or mail servers. Soloway’s main objective with sending out these spam messages were to get the recipients to use his internet marketing company to advertise their products. People who clicked on a link in the e-mail were directed to his website. Soloway would then advertise his ability to send out as many as 20 million advertisements over a 15 day period for $495.00. But please, if you are the type who hacks away at code all day long, don’t get involved in this SPAM business, unless, of course, you want to share your fate with Soloway!

 Written by: Ben Jabbawy, Cornell University

Tom, a friend of mine who recently graduated as a Materials Science major, is very excited about his work at Intel.

What triggered your interest in applying to engineering programs?

The story you’ll hear from a lot of engineers is that they were simply good at math and science and it only seemed natural to apply to engineering schools. However for me, it was more about wanting to understand how and why things around me worked, from something as simple as an alarm clock to something much more complex like an automobile or even a computer.

Which class stands out most for you? Why?

The classes I enjoyed most were the ones that opened my eyes to amazing new technologies that could revolutionize the way we live our lives. The most impressive of these was a class focused on organic electronics. When thinking of electronics you normally imagine copper wires, lead batteries, silicon computer chips, and other inorganic materials. This class taught me about a whole new class of plastics and other organic materials which performed the functions of normal inorganic materials. What was even better about these materials is that they could be printed onto flexible plastic sheets to form futuristic devices like electronic newspapers and solar energy producing windows.

What was your major?

My major was Materials Science which focuses on the physics and theory of why materials behave the way they do. So for example we learned why metals when bent will keep their form, why plastics when bent will return to their original form, and why ceramics when bent will shatter. This major also included some revolutionary laboratory research like the organic electronics I mentioned above. This gave undergraduates the ability to apply their classroom learning in a real world situation in a cutting edge laboratory environment.

Were you apart of any cool student groups or project teams related to science?

I was part of an amazing research group which eventually became some of my best friends at Cornell. We all worked extremely hard in the lab and then loved to celebrate after successfully publishing a scientific paper or discovering something previously unknown to the scientific community.

What does Intel do?

Intel is the world’s largest computer chip producer. Chances are the computer you use daily has an Intel computer chip inside. We make computer chips for desktops, laptops, and even super powerful server computers which process the huge amounts of information that travels through the internet on a daily basis.

Where do you fit in at Intel?

Making a computer chip takes hundreds and even thousands of process steps. My position is called a Process Engineer, which basically means that I am in charge of a particular step, or process, required in making a computer chip. This involves running silicon wafers through large, highly complicated equipment capable of adding or removing extremely thin layers of material, which create billions of transistors. These transistors act as on/off switches and form the basis all computer chips.

What kind of cutting edge work are you involved in?

I currently work in Intel’s newest and most advanced computer chip manufacturing plant. This plant has equipment which is capable of creating features as small as 65 nanometers. This is 150,000 times smaller than a centimeter and far smaller than what the human eye can see. Because we can create such tiny features, we are able to cram more transistors and therefore more computing power into a computer chip. 

Written by: Ben Jabbawy, Cornell University

“Don’t Forget to memorize the Krebs Cycle for this week’s exam…”

What’s so funny about this quote, which I’m sure all of you will hear from your science teachers at some point, is that everyone in the class, myself included, was too busy packing up our bags and shuffling our folders, just aching to escape our dreadful biology class. Why should I care about how to convert carbs into usable energy? Once I make it back to the cafeteria to hang out with my friends and listen to Snoop, I’ll finally thank Mr. Krebs, whoever he is…

If you’re anything like us at Technizzel, you’re probably sick of learning science through boring, smelly text books, with images of scientists and experiments older than America itself. What about the cool stuff? What’s inside an ipod? Who is responsible for designing new cell phones? What the heck is a carbon nanotube? How does an MRI actually work?

These are issues we all find interesting, yet we never seem to learn about them. Although you all probably assume engineers wear big, dorky, thick glasses and have pocket protectors for all their pens, We assure you you are wrong. Only 90% of engineers do (chuckle). Today, engineers are so much more than what your physics text books illustrates. Learn with us as we explore the companies and individuals working on the science and technologies of tomorrow.