Category: blog
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Unspam files lawsuit against unnamed cybercrooks
Anti-spam firm hopes to force banks to share more information on attacks. Unspam Technologies , the company behind Project Honey Pot, has filed a lawsuit against unnamed ‘John Does’, who are thought to be responsible for stealing millions of dollars every month from US bank accounts through the use of malware. In 2007, Unspam filed…
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Anti-Obama sentiments used in spam campaign
‘DDoS software’ turns out to be malware. In a new spam campaign users are being urged to participate in a DDoS attack on the website of American president Barack Obama in protest against his healthcare reforms. The email contains a link to a piece of software that users can download to participate in the attack.…
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ICANN adopts new domain tasting policy
‘Free temporary registrations’ come to an end. A new policy adopted by ICANN, the organization responsible for the assignment of domain names and IP addresses, has brought the practice of domain tasting to an end. Domain tasting is the practice of trying out a newly registered domain and receiving a full refund if the purchase…
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Yahoo! re-opens e-postage discussion
‘CentMail’ to benefit charities, harm spammers. Online giant Yahoo! has launched a website to give a charitable twist to the old idea of combating spam by making senders pay a small price for every email they send. The project, dubbed CentMail in a pun on the popular mail agent sendmail , lets senders voluntarily donate…
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McColo shutdown not felt the same by all recipients
Mailbox-level reduction may depend on spam detection methods. When the rogue provider McColo was taken offline in November 2008, depriving many botnets of their command and control systems, global spam levels were reported to have dropped by as much as 60%. However, new research shows that this drop was not experienced as such by all…
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Yxe trojan infecting mobile phones
Symbian software-signing slipup certifies SMS spambot. A new trojan, the first of its kind, is affecting users of the Symbian mobile operating system by spreading itself via text messages sent to all numbers in the phone’s address book. These messages contain a link, clicking on which will attempt to install an application Sexy Space ,…
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Call for last-minute technical papers
Submissions invited for technical ‘turbo’ talks at VB Geneva. Virus Bulletin is seeking submissions from those wishing to present last-minute technical papers at VB2009. The VB conference includes a programme of 40-minute presentations running in two concurrent streams: Technical and Corporate, covering topics that include in-the-cloud technologies, anti-spam testing, automated analysis, rogue security software, web…
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Five botnets responsible for 75% of spam sent
Each infected machine sends spam at rate of almost two messages per second. Spam levels have increased 60% since the beginning of this year, according to security company Marshal8e6 in its latest Security Threats report. The increase means that spam levels are now back at where they were mid-2008, prior to the closure of the…
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Patch Tuesday brings little relief from browser exploits
Six fixes issued, but new IE zero day emerges along with Firefox flaw. Microsoft has issued its monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’ security update, with some serious browser flaws patched, but a new IE zero-day has been seen being exploited in the wild, and Firefox users have also been warned about a serious vulnerability. The Patch Tuesday…
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Korea DDoS surge mired in hype and confusion
Rows rumble on over sources and targets of botnet attacks. Last week’s gush of denial-of-service attacks has sparked considerable excitement and argument, with rumours of possible links to North Korean aggression leading to frenzied hype and ill-founded suggestions of the outbreak of cyberwar. The attacks targeted a range of servers, notably government and news websites…