spam

Twitter rebuts Sarkozy censorship allegations

Twitter accounts that were either critical or made fun of French President Nicolas Sarkozy were suspended this past week--causing some to cry censorship. Now Twitter has responded, be it indirectly, by implying that these accounts violated either its parody or spam policy.

This debacle began when Sarkozy created his first Twitter account last week and hours later announced that he was running for re-election. Shortly after, French digital-rights watchdog Internet Without Borders noticed that three accounts, @ForteFrance, @MaFranceForte, and @SarkozyCaSuffit, had been suspended and one account, @_nicolassarkozy, didn't have any new tweets since the president's announcement.

Without … Read more

Spam continues to dip but malware marches merrily on

Spam may be down, but cybercriminals are keeping busy launching more sophisticated attacks (PDF), according to McAfee's latest Threats Report.

Looking at 2011's final quarter, McAfee found that spam hit its lowest level in years, especially across popular targets such as the U.K., Brazil, Argentina, and South Korea. But the U.S. and Germany saw their rates inch up slightly.

And though spam levels have declined overall, junk mail is still a clear danger because of the increase in spearphishing, or more targeted attacks. In years past, spammers sent their payloads to a slew of random addresses, … Read more

Kelihos botnet makes a comeback

A once-dead botnet has been resurrected and resumed its spamming ways.

The original Kelihos botnet compromised only about 41,000 computers but was capable of sending 3.8 billion spam e-mails each day promoting unregulated pharmaceuticals, fraudulent stock scams and, in some cases, sites dealing with sexual exploitation of children. Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab took down the malware last September using a "sinkhole" technique that tricked the infected computers into getting their instructions from a computer the companies controlled.

However, while the technique was effective at disabling the botnet quickly, it was merely a temporary fix as many … Read more

How to identify fake Facebook accounts

Hello, Facebook friends, I am male, straight, often ridiculously good-looking, and this is a real message: she's not that into you.

And by she, I mean one of those hot girls on Facebook who always seems too desperate and overzealous in trying to connect to you and everyone on your friend list.

Apparently, of some 850 million active Facebook users, a lot are fake profiles created to spread spam and viruses. These are often categorized as spammers or attackers. Security firm Barracuda Networks released today the findings from its most recent study that helps distinguish attackers from real users. … Read more

Microsoft's Kelihos botnet suspect says he's innocent

The man pegged by Microsoft as the mastermind behind the Kelihos botnet, says he's not guilty, according to a report.

The BBC said today that Andrey N. Sabelnikov, a former employee of antivirus company Agnitum, had contacted the news agency to say that he was "surprised and shocked" by Microsoft's claim and would "prove his innocence." The BBC also quoted a blog post by Sabelnikov that said he was "absolutely not guilty":

I was very surprised and shocked to read in the press that I was being accused of a grievous crime … Read more

Microsoft identifies suspected Kelihos botnet author

Four months after taking down the Kelihos botnet, Microsoft today identified the man it believes was behind the massive infection designed to deliver spam and steal data.

In an amended complaint (PDF) filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the software giant accused Andrey N. Sabelnikov, a resident of St. Petersburg, Russia, of writing the code for and participating in the creation of the Kelihos malware. The complaint further alleges that Sabelnikov used the malware to control and nurture the Kelihos botnet.

Kelihos comprised about 41,000 infected computers worldwide and was capable … Read more

Twitter acquires anti-malware company Dasient

Twitter brought the malware-fighting startup Dasient into its team today.

"Effective immediately, we will be bringing our technology, tools, and team to the revenue engineering team at Twitter," Dasient wrote on its blog.

This company, which specializes in malware protection and Web security, launched its Web anti-malware platform in 2009. In 2010, it debuted the first anti-malvertising service to protect sites from "malicious ads."

"By joining Twitter, Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world's largest real-time information network," Dasient wrote on its blog. "As part of … Read more

HotSpot Shield strengthens VPN with anti-malware wall

HotSpot Shield maker AnchorFree has built an extra wall of protection into its popular virtual private network software, available today. The update adds a malware site guard to the VPN client without requiring you to download a new version of the program because the changes have all been made on the server, not on your computer.

With the anti-malware site guard in place, HotSpot Shield will throw up a warning like the one you see in the screenshot above. Available on Windows (download), Mac (download), and iOS (download), the new anti-malware site protection is based off a database of more … Read more

McAfee to plug 'spammer' hole this week

McAfee will release a fix this week for a bug in its SaaS for Total Protection anti-malware service that scammers were using to distribute spam, the company said today.

The problem came to light after McAfee customers reported in blog posts and forum sites that spammers were using a hole in McAfee's RumorServer relay service to secretly send spam from their machines. The customers said they noticed the problem after their e-mails were blocked by e-mail providers and their IP addresses appeared on blacklists.

The problem is isolated to the SaaS Total Protection service, according to David Marcus, director … Read more