Spam

Viet Nam is not one of the leading Information and Communications Technology (ICT) nations in the world, but it ranks fifth as a source of spam, the Viet Nam Information Security Association said yesterday.

Moreover, many users underestimated the importance of information security in fighting fraud on the internet and failed to take preventive measures, the association told a meeting organised to observe the first national Day of Information Security in HCM City.

It is 'not surprising' that cybercriminals have begun using Facebook to send out spam, according to security firm Sophos.

Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at the company, said that Facebook 'has sky rocketed in importance and everyone loves it', which means cybercriminals will enjoy it too. 'Spammers and hackers basically follow the trend, so it is not surprising at all that they are attacking Facebook and using Facebook to send out spam,' she said.

McColo, a Web hosting firm believed to be responsible for hosting roughly three-quarters of the world's spam, goes offline. Two of the firm's primary ISPs reportedly cut ties with the company after receiving evidence of McColo's ties to botnets and cyber-crooks.

A Web hosting firm reportedly responsible for hosting roughly 75 percent of the world's spam went offline Nov. 11 after its primary Internet providers cut the company off.

Spam that's used to peddle drugs such as a Viagra through the Storm botnet is generating as much as £1.6m per year for hackers, according to researchers. The computer science department of the University of California carried out a study by infiltrating the Storm botnet, a robust peer-to-peer system that commands millions of hacked computers to send spam campaigns.

Researchers modified Storm's command-and-control system to insert their own links in spam messages that lead to websites they created instead of the one's spammers were advertising.

Online miscreants are riding the coat-tails of US President-elect Barack Obama, with security companies reporting a flood of new Obama-related malware and spam.

The spam messages - which started even before Obama had the chance to give his victory speech - promise new video clips of "amazing" Obama speeches, fresh interviews and election results, but instead users are hit with a virus that will compromise their personal data.

Bargaining with your health doesn’t just mean you’re heading for a shorter life expectancy, but also, increases the chances that you will either get scammed in the process, or have to pay more in the long-term while dealing with the health issues arising from using expired pharmaceutical with unverifiable origins, you bargained for at the first place.

In a reprise of a summer tactic, hackers are trying to trick people into infecting their PCs with malware by sending them e-mail that poses as bogus airline-ticket invoices and boarding passes, a security company said today.

The spam, which claims to be from Continental Airlines Inc., thanks the recipient for using a new "Buy flight ticket Online" service. It also provides a log-in username and password and says the recipient's credit card has been charged more than $900, according to Trend Micro Inc.'s research.

Those pesky visual puzzles that have to be completed each time you sign up for a Web mail account or post a comment to a blog are under attack. It's not just from spam-spewing computers or hackers, though; it's also from researchers who are using anti-spam puzzles to develop smarter, more humanlike algorithms.

The most common type of puzzle (a series of distorted letters and numbers) is increasingly being cracked by smarter AI software. And a computer scientist has now developed an algorithm that can defeat even the latest photograph-based tests.

Cyber-security experts foresee nearly 20 per cent spike in spam messages in the run-up to Diwali, as spammers attempt to cash-in on the festival season to clutter inboxes with spams embedded with trojans, Keyloggers and other malware (malicious software).

Researchers at Trend Micro, an online security firm, has cautioned about a spam mail which declares World War III. Also, the mail contains a link to fake site appearing like the news agency CNN.