Cellphone viruses: hype or hellish new threat– apodcast I recorded for the BBC World Service Business Daily. If you want to subscribe to an RSS feed of this podcast you can do so here, or it can be found on…
Read More… (From loose wire blog)

EMAIL spam has hit an all-time high and is expected to increase thanks to a volatile virus that uses infected computers to spread the unsolicited emails, an internet security management company says. via News.com.au
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

The August State of Spam Report highlights the continuing decline of image spam, which reached a low in July from its peak in January. In addition, we observed the emergence of a new focus - greeting card spam, PDF and other file attachments spam, and the rise in URLs with Chinese top-level domains (TLDs) marketing spam. This month”s spotlight includes regional spam trends in EMEA.Though still steadily declining, what we”ve come to think of as image spam” has not gone away. The preferred delivery method of this spam type is now PDF, which emerged in June of 2007 and was discussed in a previous post. Symantec is seeing PDF spam ranging between two to eight percent of all spam. July also saw the emergence of yet more tactics focused on spamming images. These tactics include the use of XLS and ZIP files. At this time, the volume of these spam types is low but Symantec is closely monitoring this new technique.Greeting card spam containing links to viruses was seen in higher than usual numbers in July. More than 250 million Symantec customers were targeted with these message types. Around the Fourth of July a particularly large outbreak was seen and blogged on. The content of the greeting cards consists of an exposed IP address in most cases, which is a very good indicator that the card is not genuinely good. These exposed IP address links were downloading Trojans onto computers. A sample of this message type can be seen in the August State of Spam Report.Also observed in July was the rise in the number of spammy URLs utilizing the cn” TLD. While historically the most commonly seen TLDs in spammy URLs were net” and com,” in July Symantec estimates that over 74 million spam messages contained a spammy URL with a cn” TLD. Several possible reasons for this rise are included in the August State of Spam Report.The spotlight on Regional spam trends EMEA” this month showcases casino spam, Italian medication spam and an iPhone scam. European casino spam was first mentioned in the April State of Spam Report. Current observations show this spam type covered by at least three different languages. Samples can be seen in August State of Spam Report. One common attack in the US market is male enhancement” medication spam. The European market, and in particular the Italian market, is now seeing this spam type as well. What is different about this version is that the subject lines of the messages observed were all designed to make it look like the email was from a friend.Another interesting spam seen in the European market was purporting to sell the new Apple iPhone from a UK warehouse. This is interesting because the iPhone is not available in Europe yet and the price listed for the phone was far below retail.

Read More… (From Security Response Weblog)

A widespread e-mail spam campaign is posing as a screensaver, but is really designed to install a Trojan horse and multiple rootkits on infected Windows PCs. The e-mails claim that the recipient has been sent a screensaver by a friend.
Read More… (From Spam News)

“Earlier, spammers used embedded images in mails to circumvent spam filters that work by checking for specific words and phrases in message content”

Large numbers of PDF spam have been doing rounds in the last two months, but their volumes surged dramatically since the beginning of July. via SecurityPark.net
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

IBM today unveiled a virtual e-mail security solution based on the existing Proventia Network Mail Security System from its Internet Security Systems division. via Monitor Today
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

A rash of virus-laden spam has been going around posing as Hallmark e-cards or other e-cards. “You’ve received a greeting ecard from a friend” says the subject. Variations include “You’ve received a greeting card from a partner”, “You’ve received a greeting postcard from a class-mate”, and “You’ve received a greeting ecard from a class mate”. The “ecard” appears to come from such legitimate sounding addresses as hallmark.com, MyPostcards.com, postcards.org, e-cards.com, NetFunCards.com, FunnyPostcards.com, Greeting-Cards.com, and VintagePostcards.com. Whatever the variation, it’s not only spam, it’s almost certainly carrying a virus or a trojan which will turn your computer into a spam- and virus-sending robot.
Read More… (From The Internet Patrol)

“In India, strong family-oriented values act as a dampener for any cyber crime related to infiltrating computers with malware, spams and viruses”

A research by US-based IT security and control firm SophosLabs shows that only 2.8 per cent of all spam or malware - software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system - comes out of India. via The Telegraph
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

“Our research has simply found that spammers are finding newer, more productive methods in their delivery of spam messages.”

Spammers are losing the fight as IT users become wise to unsolicited files, security software house BitDefender has said. via Computer Weekly
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

One of the rocket scientists over at Spam Central has plumbed new depths in the search for novel ways to deliver their stock spam. They’ve started sending Excel spreadsheets … compressed as zip archives. The documents promote EXMT.PK and are stylistically similar to other Excel spams promoting the same company’s stock on the Frankfurt exchange (sent only to German addresses, we’ve only seen examples of these in backscatter).Aside from the fact that zip attachments are ‘delete on sight’ for 99.99% of the anti-spam and anti-virus solutions out there, I really can’t see anything wrong with this idea at all.
Read More… (From Spamnation)

Security vendor BitDefender has reported that the number of spam messages with PDF attachments dropped recently.Having just checked our traps and found large numbers of PDF spams advertising SREA.OB (again) and SZSN.OB (again), I can’t help wondering if BitDefender is connected to the same Internet that we are.
Read More… (From Spamnation)

“Website infections have increased significantly in the past six months. The number of infected sites has grown more than five times since January”

Sophos Reveals Sharp Rise in Web Threats, and Uncovers Latest Trends in Viruses, Spyware and Spam Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, has published new research on the first six months of … via Software Journal
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

“YOU (andrew.m) have joined #martian_ ‘=-=’Mode #martian_ +nt by localhost.localdomain ‘=-=’Topic for #martian_ is ‘.bot.remove”

Internet service provider Cox Communications’is reportedly diverting attempts to reach certain online chat channels and redirecting them to a server that attempts to remove spyware from the computer.”By doing … via Privacy Digest
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

“Website infections have increased significantly in the past six months. The number of infected sites has grown more than five times since January”

Sophos Reveals Sharp Rise in Web Threats, and Uncovers Latest Trends in Viruses, Spyware and Spam Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, has published new research on the first six months of … via Software Journal
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

“YOU (andrew.m) have joined #martian_ ‘=-=’Mode #martian_ +nt by localhost.localdomain ‘=-=’Topic for #martian_ is ‘.bot.remove”

Internet service provider Cox Communications’is reportedly diverting attempts to reach certain online chat channels and redirecting them to a server that attempts to remove spyware from the computer.”By doing … via Privacy Digest
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

“Website infections have increased significantly in the past six months. The number of infected sites has grown more than five times since January”

Sophos Reveals Sharp Rise in Web Threats, and Uncovers Latest Trends in Viruses, Spyware and Spam Sophos, a world leader in IT security and control, has published new research on the first six months of … via Software Journal
Read More… (From Email Spam News)

The Storm worm authors are waging a multi-pronged attack and generating the largest virus attack some researchers say they’ve seen in two years, apparently with the aim of building a giant botnet.
Read More… (From Spam News)