End of an epoch: CastleCops closed

FYI, just in case you missed it, the CastleCops "malware databases" moved to SystemLookup.com already a couple of months ago.

The site was generously made available to us by Javacool, and it contains every single entry from Castlecops.

The Lists are being updated throughout the day by an editing team currently consisting of the following members of the anti-malware community:

Marckie
Metallica
miekiemoes
nasdaq
random/random
Rorschach112
TonyKlein
Vino Rosso
Zupe

 

I think castlecops is closed due to US economy meltdown...

 

I too was a member of that great site. Although my visits there had become somewhat irregular in the last year or so.
I wish Paul and Robin well for the future.

 

Very sad news...

 

@Tony Klein
re: http://www.systemlookup.com/lists.php
Thankyou
Nice really nice to see this up and running.
Kudos to Javacool: the unsung hero: who is that masked man ??

respects..

 

Thanks a lot Gerard Morentzy

 

Sad Sad News .... CC was good place for information.

@Gerard Morentzy : Thanks for taking the pain & time to make the copy.

 

this is something i'd be interested in finding out as well... i haven't seen anything about it, however...

 

Many Thanks

to Gerard Morentzy and 333halfevil
for their effort!

Lets hope that no other important Security site will be closed
during the years of economic crisis (2009-2010)!
Legendary sites, like CastleCops, should be preserved...
The Legacy of CastleCops will live on!

 

I have a wiki and anybody willing to tackle the huge task of converting the recovered pages is more than welcome to use my wiki.

 

So Sad to lose such a great site which helped and educated us all especially me i learned a lot of computing skills and fixes.
Hope they return?

smiler

 

Dear "Ger"

It's clear to me that you are seeing offense that isn't there. Unless you feel offended I'm addressing you as "Ger" in which case i wonder why you feel justified calling me "Lush" (which i have no problems with) in the first place.

If I could like to guess why your response is so aggressive, I think me pointing out the truth makes you feel i'm attacking your "work". Talk about egos...

And yes to those of your thanking "Ger", I'm sure his efforts are worth a lot more than the efforts of those who actually spend hundreds of hours working on the material you so delight in using

So Yes, thank "Ger". No need to thank the guy who actually did the work that you are all leaching off.

I'm upset because the material is now all gone, and there is no chance of it being updated. But okay, if you prefer to think that Ger is the only genius in the world who knows how to use google cache, so be it.

PS the internet archive link works, it was just a typo.

Also let me correct some dis-information....

If you read the original post by "Ger", you would easily think the wiki (which is a "site") isn't in the internet archive, but that's false of course.

Something one can easily verify. I wonder why "Ger" is trying to confuse people.

To enhance the value of his use of googlecache?

 

Thanks. the problem isn't getting a wiki, the problem is time spent converting the files.. It's one thing to spent a bit of time on some one-off work converting files to pdf, another to spend hundreds of hours actually creating content...

But guess who's the one that gets all the glory?

 

It sucks all your work,was suddenly gone, when CC shut down. I know how much work goes into creating wiki articles, as the Wiki Markup Language is a real PITA to work with.

I would like to recover as much of that information as humanly possible, and is asking a lot of any one person to accomplish. Which, is why it is preferable to have a team working on recovering the information. I would start the huge task myself, but I just don't have that kind of time available.

The offer to use my wiki still stands, and Lusher I certainly do appreciate what you did at CastleCops and the work that went into your wiki articles.

 

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so I always appreciate instructions like what he gave, no matter how basic they might be to more advanced people.

Regards,
Scotcov

 

Hello ....

OK - Is or is not any of CC in the Wayback machine? After happening upon the CC info elsewhere (before I came here) I spent quite a while at the wayback site very early yesterday morning attempting to see what I might find and I came up blank. Your link doesn't work. Out of my league, but are there not bots or agents that could be used to more easily "scarf" the Google info??

P.S. Thanks for all the efforts you and others spent at CC. Having been on the Net for a coupla decades, I know how a sense of community can come about. [For a long time I was a regular in the Usenet Abuse community, particulaly NANAU & NANAE.] Ceratinly it is like losing a family member to a tragic accident when something like this happens.

I did not spend a great deal of time at CC, but used its resources significantly. During the past 8 or so years, I have been fairly inactive as a poster - my last serious efforts were as a helper on the GRC sites.

I do hope much of the material can be salvaged one way or another.

Cheers JoW

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20070207...tlecops.com/Understanding_Computer_Infections
There was a typo in the link, as LUSHER mentioned.

LUSHER, Much thanks!

 

Too bad that site owners don't just pass ownership and control over to their trusted friends and just keep these sites going forward.

It is a sign of times, bad one unfortunately, we better be very vigil and collect then save everything we can because we never know when the Global Internet Plug might be pulled too.

That's exactly why i been saving everything since Windows 98 in programs i possibly can because you simply can't find many of what used to be useful apps on the net anymore.

Could security and other useful sites be next?

Be vigil!!!! Because theres an alarming trend here that seems to be continuing.

EASTER

 

I'm sure the 'black hats' will consider it a good thing when any resource dedicated to anti-malware goes down,it seems that the cost of running was the main factor though.

 

On a brighter note it may not be totally dead and buried,but I can't say any more as nothing is definite yet.

 

Lusher, LUSHER.... I was aggressive? "Leached" off the work of others? I thought I was helping! You are obviously quite provocative and angry. I am sorry about your work at CastleCops, but don't come here whining about how all is "lost" (I know, you had an excuse for not backing up), have people try to help and then act offended that I spelled out how I retrieved all the info in an effort to be helpful.

Looking at past posts of yours here at Wilders, I see you are very sarcastic with other members here on a regular basis. At least I know now it's not just me.

Happy New Year. I hope it's a better one for you.

 

Lol, you want to know what the Apocalypse looks like? Pull the plug on the Internet, the world is that reliant on it. I totally agree that the lack of creativity and usefulness in applications is dropping, though my belief is that it is more due to laziness and greed than lack of cash/economy and ability. Remember during the early-mid 90s when you had people all over the place saying "Hey, I got an idea!" or "Hey, this could really help people"? Now it's "Eh, my app, my terms." and " Hey, let's copy this app, give it a different name, and charge for it". I may not have said all that so well, but I think you'll get my point.

I also don't like the "Big Dogs" a.k.a MS and Google, buying apps and companies, and either not making them better, but merely putting their names on them, or just dropping them altogether, and getting rid of great apps and companies, even when they aren't even the Big Dogs competition. The last thing I want is for MS and Google to have a monopoly of the frigging internet, though that's exactly what I see happening....oh boy did I take this thread off topic, sorry *facepalm*

 

Yeah, but your statements very well become bonified prophecy coming of such sad trends or should that be ends. You can add Symantec to that list of hogs too

Oddly and ironically it all seems oh so true. Another problem that is really beginning to show is the demise of some "used to be" great freeware sites like Son of Spy and others that have had a fairly long history of offering old & recent freewares. I know other sites have opened up for freewares but in comparison they seem to be focusing on recents only, and i guess this too was to be expected eventually with the advent of Vista, greed, monopolies, etc.

CastleCops WAS a site of some really useful reading resources and i too grieve it's loss.

EASTER

 

It's just a pity that they did not transfer the hosting of the site to someone else.

I am sure there are many trustworthy, commendable people who would gladly volunteer to host CC.

I have to say I am disappointed in the way CC was shut down without warning and without consulting with the wider community ~ hell even a software company might want to host CC and to improve their image!

 

This is one of the most disappointing loses of all, IMO - especially PIRT. Because PIRT forwarded phishing URLs to just about every major anti-phishing group there is it made it very easy to submit phishing to groups that were dedicated to taking it down.

For now, it looks like there are a couple of alternatives.

• KnujOn allows spam/phishing submission and is dedicated to taking down the spamvertized URLs.
• SpamCop is an old standby for reporting any kind of UBE/phishing sites, although their focus is on the source of the sending of the spam, and not the URLs specifically.
• PhishTank is a service run by OpenDNS that has a volunteer staff who takes submission of phishing URLs and marks them as valid. Many services aggregate their data, and users of the OpenDNS system are automatically protected if they use it.
• APWG accepts forwarded phish emails of all types.
• The BBB accepts phishing emails at nophishing@cbbb.bbb.org and of course the FTC at spam@uce.gov. US-CERT at one time accepted phishing emails, however, I am not sure they still do. The last time I tried to report one, I was redirected to submit a full report to the IC3. But, the email address phishing-report@us-cert.gov is still listed on their site.
• Javawoman also has a list of addresses to report phishing emails to.

As far as MIRT goes, I believe that they took the file and sent it over to VirusTotal which scans the file with most major AVs and then submits the file in question to them for analysis. Probably this method, combined with submitting the email to SpamCop and KnujOn will hopefully be successful too. I have seen some other sites in the past that offer to accept malware or suspected malware for analysis, but I have no idea what their credentials are or how actively they pursue it.

Rick's Spam Digest also has a wealth of good information on spam in general.

Finally, I wanted to mention to those of you who are scouring the Google cache for old Castlecops data, there is a FF extension called PassiveCache which may make it easier to find. Once you get the cached page, you will want to download a local copy (I'm sure there are web site leecher tools that will allow for this - I believe FreeDownloadManager has this functionality) because, as mentioned, the cache will dry up soon. MSN & Yahoo also maintain cached copies of sites, although I am not all that familiar with them.

Having said all that, I would think that the admin(s) of CC would at least allow some individuals to have a backed up database of the forum, as well as the wiki so it can be hosted somewhere else and continued to be maintained.

The loss of CC is definitely an unfortunate one, and it seems like a project like BlueFrog would be less prone to DoS/DDoS attacks on a decentralized network, although that's a completely different discussion.