spam

Spam now accounts for close to 90 percent of all e-mail worldwide due to a surge in February, according to Symantec.

Two botnets named Grum and Rustock helped push spam levels up 5.5 percent in February over the prior month, according to the security firm's report (PDF). After doing business as usual over the past year, Grum suddenly sprang to life in February, increasing the amount of spam it generated by 51 percent. As a result, the botnet is now to blame for 26 percent of all global spam.

Rustock also surged last month, pushing up global spam … Read more

Spam is so pervasive that many think the lunch meat was named after the e-mail and not the other way around. Spam's annoying, but viruses are deadly to your PC, and when they come in tandem, it's double trouble. The right tools can help you stay one step ahead of the problem. PCPrivacy's Spam Sweeper can stop spam and kill viruses before they have a chance to enter your system through your e-mail client. Spam Sweeper doesn't download the entire message, just enough to tell what it is, a simple scheme that's quicker than ordinary … Read more

Microsoft is intent on eliminating the Waledac botnet and is using the legal system to help.

Tim Cranton, Microsoft's associate general counsel, wrote Thursday on the company's blog that Microsoft has been shutting down Waledac by working with technology partners and taking legal action.

In response to a complaint filed by Microsoft, a federal judge issued on Monday a temporary restraining order to shut down 227 Internet domains believed to be run by cybercriminals spreading the Waledac spambot.

This week's legal takedown of Waledac, known internally at Microsoft as "Operation b49," came after months of … Read more

Twitter users were being hit on Wednesday with what seems to be the second phishing attack this week, according to security firm Sophos.

The latest attack features a message that says "This you????" followed by a link that leads to a fake Twitter log-in page, according to a blog post by Sophos' Graham Cluley. If a user provides the log-in credentials, the attackers have control over the user's account and can retweet the phishing message from that account.

Earlier in the week, a phishing attack was spreading via direct messages that were widely distributed because of third-party … Read more

Malware-carrying spam and attacks via Twitter and Facebook grew dramatically in the second half of 2009, says a report (PDF) released Tuesday by security company M86 Security.

The volume of spam shot up last year to more than 200 billion messages each day, or 80 percent to 90 percent of all inbound e-mail sent to organizations, said M86. Spam carrying malware also surged in the second half of the year, hitting 3 billion each day compared with 600 million per day in the first half of 2009.

The vast majority of spam is now sent through botnets hiding on infected … Read more

Web robots, commonly referred to as "bots," are software programs written to do automated tasks, like crawling the Web looking for new sites. They also appear in chat rooms and instant messaging services masquerading as real people.

Depending on the level of sophistication of the artificial intelligence, they can attempt to understand questions and respond appropriately. Usually the conversation is pre-set, which makes for some rather silly conversations.

Bots are nothing new, but not everyone has personally interacted with one. I, for one, have never been approached by a bot in a chat room or on IM, so … Read more

"Bomb Blast." "Jackson is still alive: proof." "Obama cursed by Pope." These are just a few of the subjects used by cybercriminals last year to trick people into opening malware-infected e-mails.

Spam that uses the latest news headlines was just one of the hot trends last year in the world of cybercrime, according to McAfee's "Q4 Threats Report" (PDF), released Tuesday. The latest threat assessment also noted a rise in "hacktivism," or politically motivated cyberattacks.

Though spam levels in the fourth quarter actually dropped by 24 percent from the … Read more

Facebook has sued three men, alleging they used phishing techniques to get access to Facebook user accounts and then sent spam from the compromised accounts.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in San Jose, California, and named as defendants Jeremi Fisher, Philip Porembski, Ryan Shimeall and the companies associated with them, Choko Systems, Harm, and iMedia Online Services, according to a Facebook statement late on Tuesday. The defendants could not be reached for comment.

The defendants are accused of launching at least four spam campaigns over the last couple of years, the latest in the last three months … Read more

AT&T announced they're going to help San Francisco and New York with data coverage, but then blamed the children for all their bandwidth problems. We also take Facebook to task for their privacy handling. Nothing new there. And is the Apple Tablet coming in the spring? Will it be $1,000?

Facebook details new privacy settings http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10411418-2.html

… where the default setting is “everyone” http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20091209/facebook-rolls-out-new-privacy-settings-encourages-users-to-abandon-privacy/

Apple tablet set for spring … Read more