Spam

Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos's global network of virus, spyware and spam analysis center, have welcomed the news that the South Korean authorities have arrested a man suspected of running a 16,000-strong network of zombie computers.

According to the state-backed Korea Information Security Agency (KISA), the man is believed to have sent 18 million spam emails to 133 countries every day from his network (or botnet) of compromised computers.

A popular email security company said it would cease trading after being victimised by one of the world's biggest spammers. The Israeli-based firm Blue Security said it could no longer continue to operate in the face of an escalating threat to the internet from a malicious Russian spammer known only as PharmaMaster.

People who bombard innocent victims with a blizzard of unsolicited "spam" e-mails are breaking the law and could face up to five years in jail, London's High Court rules.

In a test case that puts spammers in the same league as people who spread computer viruses, two judges said that these cyber-spammers could be prosecuted under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act.

The NSW Department of Health has purchased antispam and antivirus software to help prevent spam from draining its resources.

The move comes after reports warned that IT systems in the health sector suffered almost 50 percent of more spyware attacks than other industries.

NSW Health's head of IT infrastructure, John Brown, said an efficient solution is needed to maintain strategy and policy on health care in NSW. "Any disruptions can quite literally have an impact on the health and treatment of patients in NSW," Brown said.

Find out how spammers are probing your email system in an attempt to identify and "harvest" legitimate email addresses from your organization and learn how you can protect your organization.

Spammers are hitting back at the customers of an Israeli anti-spam company, Blue Security. Customers had been using Blue Security's Blue Frog tool to report spammers, but those same customers are now on the receiving end of a stream of e-mails ordering them to stop using Blue Security's services. It would appear spammers that were reported via Blue Frog got hit with a stream of e-mails themselves, and are now fighting back.

US junk emailers sent more spam than those in any other country during the first quarter, a security company recently reported, although China is hot on America's heels.

According to UK-based Sophos, US senders accounted for 23.1 percent of the world's spam in 2006's first three months. Chinese spammers sent 21.9 percent of global junk mail during the same period.

Laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act, and resulting prosecutions, have reduced the US's share of spam, said Sophos senior technology consultant Graham Cluley in a statement.

More spam is now relayed from Asia than any other continent, according to the latest research from security company Sophos.

Asia accounts for 42.8 percent of the spam received by Sophos' global spam monitoring network, with North America in second place with 25.6 percent, the company said on Thursday.

SoftScan announced today that in a bid to beat detection and increase the likelihood of their messages being read, spammers are increasingly using a new twist on joe-jobbing (forging the sender’s email address) that may lead to organisations abolishing the bounce back message.

“The change in tactic demonstrates that spammers are having an increasingly hard time getting through anti-spam technologies and persuading users to open up their emails and at least read them,” comments Bo Engelbrechtsen, corporate communications manger of SoftScan.

Australian authorities are beefing up the country's fight against spam email with a new code of practice for ISPs and email companies, officials said.

The code of practice comes on top of an anti-spam law passed in 2004 that mandated fines of up to A$1.1 million ($780,000) for people sending unsolicited email.

The code, drawn up by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, orders ISPs to offer spam filtering options to customers and provide a system for handling complaints.