VB Migration

Tag: spam

  • Storm DDoS hits anti-scam sites

    419 fighters attacked – NFL and TOR latest spam hooks. The massive botnet amassed by the ‘Storm’ (Zhelatin/Nuwar/Dorf/etc.) attack continues to target new victims, with the TOR online anonymity system and the start of the NFL season in the US the latest social engineering tactics to trick spam recipients into installing the trojans. Over the…

  • Spamhaus $11 million fine thrown out

    Appeal court quashes earlier e360 compensation ruling. Anti-spam operation Spamhaus , previously ordered to pay $11 million to mass-mailing firm e360 Insight after refusing to contest a case accusing it of falsely labelling those behind e360 as spammers, has had the fine thrown out in an appeal court. The case was first brought last autumn…

  • Sender authentication checks on the rise

    SPF records creep into top ten content triggers checked by ISPs. A report by email marketing software provider Lyris has revealed that use of the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) email authentication check is on the rise among ISPs. The company conducts quarterly research studies of deliverability rates for permission-based email marketing messages, and the Q2…

  • Unsafe computing in abundance

    Reports and statistics on unsafe computing practices. Last month saw a flurry of reports and statistics on unsafe computing practices. To kick off, almost a quarter of Internet-connected users in the UK believe they have suffered from a virus attack in the past year, according to figures released by the Office of National Statistics. In…

  • YouTube latest Storm hook

    Fake video links aim to pull in yet more victims. The never-ending stream of ‘Storm’ attacks continued over the weekend with a new tactic – the latest spammed email campaign contained links claiming to lead to videos on highly popular entertainment site YouTube . The simple emails follow in the wake of several similar campaigns,…

  • Monster haul of data reaped from job site

    Trojan gathers 1.6 million sets of jobseeker records. Researchers at Symantec have reported discovering a server carrying 1.6 million entries from the popular jobseeking website Monster.com , gathered by a trojan using stolen login information. The trojan, dubbed ‘Infostealer.Monstres’ by Symantec , uses logins to Monster ‘s sites for recruiters, which allow information on millions…

  • Phish poses as Sophos malware alert

    Fake security alarm lures users to spoofed site. A phishing email recently spammed out uses the name of security firm Sophos to lend credence to a fake malware alert, designed to trick readers into visiting a spoof site and handing over sensitive login details. The email, claiming to originate from financial services giant Merrill Lynch…

  • Storm e-card malware keeps on coming

    No end to flood of fake friendly greetings. A further wave of e-cards carrying links to ‘Storm’ malware (various labelled Nuwar, Peacomm, Dorf, Zhelatin) has been hitting inboxes around the world all this week, with no signs of any letup in the deluge. The latest barrage carry a simple message, using spoofed source addresses and…

  • 57% of spam scam sites hosted in US

    Study investigates sites and servers linked to from spam. A detailed investigation into the distribution and usage of webservers to host the various ‘scams’ pushed by spam campaigns has found that the vast majority of such scams use only a single server per scam, with 57.4% of these servers based in the US. The study,…

  • Pharmacy spammer gets 30 years

    ‘Rizler’ convicted on drugs, conspiracy and money laundering charges. Notorious pharmaceuticals spammer Christopher ‘Rizler’ Smith was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment last week, after selling $24 million in illegal medications through websites advertised by spam campaigns. The case broke in May 2005, when Smith’s 85-person company was shut down by the FBI and authorities seized…