Archive for January, 2008

A Short History Of Spam »

E-mail was invented at the MIT in the mid 1960s as a communications tool for the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), several years before ARPANET (which later became the Internet) was started. It was used on several operating systems during the 1960s, including MIT’s CTSS and SDC’s Q32, and it was also a basic feature in […]

Does PayPal Put You At Risk of Identity Theft? »

Over the years PayPal has become an increasingly-popular way to make payments online, the problem is that many people feel PayPal puts them at an increased risk of identity theft. Are these fears founded, or are these people missing out on a valuable online payment tool? If you’ve been afraid to use PayPal due to […]

PDF spam a step ahead of image spam »

Over time, spammers have changed their spamming tactics in their bid to gain access to people’s mailboxes. The latest tactic is to use the common PDF file format to send image spam. Brian Azzopardi from GFI Software reports. By using PDF attachments to send images instead of embedding them in the body of the email […]

FBI Warns of Rise in Phone Based Scams »

With consumers finally getting wise to phishing attacks, scammers are hitting the phones. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warned Thursday that so-called "vishing" attacks are on the rise. These are scams where criminals send an e-mail or text message to a victim, saying there has been a security problem […]

Yahoos CAPTCHA Broken…Is a Spam Tsunami in the Offing »

The CAPTCHA security system that Yahoo, and many other email service providers adopt to prevent spam, may not be secure, according to Russian security researchers. The researchers claim to have found a way in which the security system can be compromised. This would result in a huge increase in spam coming from yahoo and other […]

Spam threat: Can we win this war »

Spam has become ubiquitous, as far as the information super highway is concerned. Essentially, they are illegal unsolicited mails you find in your mail box. They can be provocative sometimes or even most times. Until strong anti-spam laws are passed and actually enforced, spam proliferation will continue because it is believed to reach a mass […]

Remote printer spam made easy »

Security researcher Aaron Weaver claims visiting a random Web site could send unwanted print requests to your nearest office printer.In a paper published in November (PDF), and cited on Wednesday in a blog by Jeremiah Grossman of White Hat Security, Weaver demonstrates the code necessary for sending a formatted page to a remote network printer, […]

January State of Spam Report »

The January State of Spam report shows that as 2007 ended, spam surged and accounted for 75 percent of all email, increasing to 83 percent in the last few days leading up to the holiday season. The December State of Spam report had showed that 72% of email traffic was spam.

Spam firewall and filtering techniques »

Over the span of the last few years, we have seen email, a once useful means of communication, transform into a hideous monster that appears to have outlived it’s usefulness. We humans have a tendency to quickly get over something good that has happened to us, while even a small affliction can continue to torment […]

Microsofts SkyDrive beta abused by spammers. »

Our labs trapped many thousands of spam overnight that are abusing the Windows Live SkyDrive Beta service launched in August last year (or rather it’s the new name for Windows Live Folders…). The service allows you to upload up to 1Gb of files and share them with anyone via weblinks.

Illegal immigrants turn to identity theft »

When U.S. Air Force veteran Marcos Miranda had his identity stolen, he went from being a valued customer and employee to a government statistic — one of thousands of identity theft victims caught up each year in the crackdown on illegal immigrants.

Phishing at the Top Level »

ICANN and overbearing governments are gearing up for a major expansion of the attack surface of the DNS.The use of domain names in most phishing is relatively crude, You see a lot of names like www.somefreewebsite.com/~ingrid/www.bankofamerica.com/…. Theres no SSL, and the tricky part of the domain name is off to the right. A user would […]

Botnets Plus Spam Equals Trouble »

Cybercrime is going upscale. Criminals are not just putting together bigger botnets–more than a million computers in some cases–they are also adopting the principles of modern marketing to get their products onto your users’ computers. This has implications that will be coming soon to thousands of mailboxes near you.

The DOC is IN Again in Spam »

It’s the new year yet spammers are out with old tricks as TrendLabs Content Security (CS) researchers report that last year’s DOC spam is back. An effective means of getting through most antispam filters, DOC spam promotes low-cost pharmaceuticals using varying subject lines, messages, and attachment file names.

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