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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 [...]

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.

Technorati Tags: Botnet, Spam Trouble

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.

Technorati Tags: DOC

Somewhere in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second biggest city, a tiny startup has struck Internet gold. Its dozen-odd employees are barely old enough to recall the demise of the Soviet Union, but industry analysts believe they’re raking in more than $100 million a year from the world’s largest banks, including Wells Fargo and Washington Mutual.

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Half of all spam involves lottery scams making them one of the fastest growing areas of cyber-crime, according to research commissioned by Microsoft across Germany, Italy, Denmark, the UK and The Netherlands..The problem is worse in the UK where around 62 percent of spam emails are lottery scams.

Technorati Tags: Email lottery scams, Email scams

With holiday shopping upon us, the most frequent question I’m asked is, "Is it safe to shop online?" The answer is, of course, "that depends." Not all online–or even brick-and-mortar–stores engage in safe security practices. And even those that do may have third-party partners–for processing orders or credit cards–that are not secure.

Technorati Tags: Identity Theft

If our biggest wishes for the season would come true, there would be no need for ScamBusters issues like this — because we’d live in a world without Internet scams! Until that day comes, however, it’s important to stay informed and alert for the most likely ways that scammers will attack you and your wallet.

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A hacker finds a way to use a booby-trapped Web page to trick Google Toolbar users into adding malicious buttons to the browser. A dialog spoofing vulnerability in the popular Google Toolbar could be exploited by malicious hackers to execute malicious files or launch identity theft attacks, according to a warning from security researcher Aviv [...]

The vast majority of IT directors are reporting significant increases in email spam, and 20% say there has been an increase of more than 100% over the last year. That’s among key findings of a survey of 460 IT directors, managers and administrators by network management, secure file transfer and messaging solutions firm Ipswitch.

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A copycat spam gang has developed a botnet that is currently responsible for more than 20 per cent of all spam in circulation, according to Marshal’s threat research TRACE Team. The botnet now has the ability to distribute similar amounts of spam as the notorious Storm botnet. Marshal has touted the spammers responsible for this [...]

Websense and MessageLabs uncover a spam campaign that is using .scr file attachments in targeted attacks. Security researchers uncovered a spam campaign Nov. 19 targeting senior level executives that utilizes .scr file attachments to spread Trojans. Such file extensions are typically associated with Microsoft Windows screensavers.

Technorati Tags: .scr file, file attachments, messagelabs, spam, trojans, websense

Those who commit cybercrime know they need to stay on the cutting edge of technology to come up with new and different ways to swindle people. Luckily, the good guys are also spending time in research labs developing ways to thwart the latest tricks employed by spammers, phishers and other criminals.

Technorati Tags: image spam, spam, [...]

Domain name servers on the net are still often vulnerable to attacks despite some marked improvements, according to a new survey. Many organisations are making efforts to install the most recent versions of BIND and eliminate Microsoft DNS for external servers. But most still leave their systems open to denial of service and pharming attacks [...]

As the Christmas shopping season shifts into high gear, take time to think carefully before making your purchases and any charitable donations. Although scammers are always prowling for victims with the following scams, consumers are especially vulnerable during the holidays. With so much to do, many otherwise cautious people let their guards down.

Technorati Tags: christmas [...]

I’ve been reviewing spam - and my conclusion is that spammers aren’t very smart. So, in order to help the poor fools along I’d like to offer some humble suggestions. First, humor sells - if you want more people to click on your stuff make it funny. Enough already with the puerile enhancement and related [...]