Spam

Hackers are using YouTube servers to lure users of the popular video sharing site into visiting dating sites or to promote their goods online in a new spam campaign, warn security experts.

Security vendor, Sophos said the hackers are also offering prizes of the recently released Halo 3 arcade game for the XBOX 360 console.

According to the Marshal TRACE team, the spammers are using YouTube’s own “Invite Your Friends” system to send large quantities of spam from genuine YouTube servers from service@youtube.com.

Spam e-mail using PDF file attachments have all but disappeared with Sophos claiming the rapid drop is because they have failed.

According to Sophos research, levels of PDF spam have dropped from a high of close to 30 percent of all spam earlier this month to virtually zero.

Sophos technology consultant, Graham Cluley, said there can only be one reason for the drop, it isn't working.

Three months after opening its platform to outside developers, Facebook is taking steps to prevent some third-party applications from engaging in what the social networking company considers inappropriate actions.

Dave Morin, Facebook's senior platform manager, outlined late Monday in an official blog posting a series of changes in the capabilities it makes available to external developers.

SoftScan is predicting a 40 per cent surge in junk email during September as spammers target students returning after the summer break.

The security firm has already seen a "dramatic rise" in the past few days as spammers perfect their techniques with e-card and document spam.

A range of new types of spam have started to circulate in recent months as spammers try to find ways to circumvent filters.

Many spammers now embed messages into various document formats including PDFs, Word files and Excel files.

PDF spam is more a nuisance than a security risk, according to Adobe, which claims there is "no hard evidence" where the junk e-mail has become a serious issue.

Responding to a query on whether PDF spam can embed malicious software, Erick Lee, a security engineer at Adobe, wrote in an e-mail on Wednesday: "PDF is no more able to embed malware on an unsuspecting user's system than any other typical e-mail attachment."

Just when it appeared tech firms had the upper hand against spam, spammers have unleashed new forms of the meddlesome e-mail to trick filters.

Spam in the form of popular PDF e-mail attachments and electronic greeting cards is confounding e-mail security systems and annoying consumers. The recent Storm e-mail virus and several pump-and-dump stock scams are clogging inboxes and snookering consumers into downloading malicious software. And it could get worse as the holidays approach, anti-spam experts say.

Mobile phone users aren't as averse to spam as previously thought, according to a new survey which claims that 11 percent of mobile owners have bought products as a result of receiving spam. Nearly two-thirds of mobile users are fed up with mobile phone spam, found the survey, which was commissioned by marketing company Pontis. 70 percent of those surveyed found mobile marketing campaigns totally irrelevant to them.

Security experts today warned of a "major new spam campaign" designed to manipulate the share price of a company that sells wireless products to young people.

Sophos reported that the scale of the spam campaign is such that it has led to a 30 per cent increase in the amount of spam seen by its global traps during the last 24 hours.

Internet spammers launched a widespread attack on e-mail inboxes this month. But instead of trying to lure users into opening a corrupted attachment, they're concealing a computer virus in a link to an online greeting card.

Postini, an e-mail security company, said it has seen about 275 million such messages since July 2. On average, the company sees about 700,000 viral e-mails per day worldwide. This week, there have been as many as 35 million in a single day because of the spike in e-card spam, said Adam Swidler, a senior vice president of Postini.

Computer users should remain vigilant following a spate of spam messages exploiting interest in the new Simpsons film, security experts have warned.

The bogus messages claim that recipients will receive a £250 Visa gift voucher for participating in an online survey. Each email contains a picture of the character Homer Simpson, which asks the user to carry out the questionnaire.

Clicking on the image redirects the user to a web page branded with similar graphics of The Simpsons, which asks the surfer to confirm their email address.