Help | Contact | Forum | Affiliates | Press
Purchase
Download
Features
Screenshots
Demo
New Brunswick receives the most spam email of the Canadian provinces while nearby Newfoundland and Labrador gets the least, according to a report from security firm Symantec. About 92.5 per cent of email in New Brunswick qualified as spam over a 10-month period studied by Symantec Hosted Services, a subsidiary of Mountain View, Calif.-based Symantec, which sells anti-spam software and services. That was the worst rate in the country and the only province to exceed the global average of 89.3 per cent, the company said. New Brunswick, British Columbia and Saskatchewan exceeded the Canadian average of 88 per cent. Newfoundland and Labrador fared best with only 86 per cent of email considered spam, followed by Quebec, Nova Scotia and Manitoba at 87 per cent, Ontario at 87.5 per cent and Alberta at 87.6 per cent. Areas with a greater proportion of small- and medium-sized businesses tend to get spammed more, the report said, because they generally have fewer resources to fend off unwanted email. Social and economic factors were also considerations, as were differing levels of security education. In Canada, the hospitality and government sectors attracted the most spam.
WIGAN PC users are having a frustrating time in front of their keyboards. The town’s internet surfers, it is claimed, are bothered by the third biggest flows of ‘spam’ in the top half of England. Only computer users in Coventry and Dudley in the West Midlands have greater problems with spam, using electronic messaging to send bulk indiscriminate advertising, reveal Symantec Hosted Services. The research, which identifies which areas have the highest spam rate, is based on data compiled over a 10 month long period. Overall, in the UK, businesses with the highest spam rate were in the telecoms, accommodation and catering and education industry sectors, with the least spammed in the automotive, recreation and estate agents industry sectors. MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst at Symantec Hosted Services Paul Wood said: “This latest study shows that looks can be deceiving and that no town or city, whatever its size, is immune to cyber criminals. “However, the good news is that security solutions in the cloud can be flexible and scaled to match the needs of any organisation. “Interestingly, industries like manufacturing, automotive and building and construction which may employ many people, receive less spam.
Spam continues to grow largely due to the growth in malicious botnets. Many botnets are command-and-control systems used by criminals and are still the main way that spam is spewed into your e-mail box. M86 Security says that the worldwide spam volume has now climbed to 230 billion messages per day, up from 200 billion at the start of 2010. America's 10 most wanted botnets M86 Security has created the "Top Ten Most Wanted" Spam-Spewing Botnets list, many of them are believed to be controlled in Eastern Europe by criminals who manipulate compromised systems, mostly PCs, around the world to generate spam, according to M86. 1. Rustock (generating 43% of all spam The current king of spam, its malware employs a kernel-mode rootkit, inserts random text into spam and is capable of TLS encryption. Concentrates solely on pharmaceutical spam. 2. Mega-D (10.2%) A long-running botnet that has had its ups and downs, owing to the attention it attracts from researchers. Concentrates mostly on pharmaceutical spam.
The United States is still No. 1 -- in spam. According to Sophos, the United States is the source of 15.2 percent of all global spam messages in the second quarter of 2010, up from 13.1 percent in the first three months of the year. In second place is India with 7.7 percent. Brazil, the United Kingdom and South Korea make up the rest of the top five at 5.5, 4.6 and 4.2 percent, respectively. As a continent, however, Europe leads the way with 35 percent, just ahead of Asia with 30.9 percent. North America meanwhile was the source of 18.9 percent of all spam. According to Sophos, spam e-mails make up 97 percent of all e-mails received by business e-mail servers, putting a strain on network resources. Behind those spam e-mails are infected computers controlled by botnets that sometimes include hundreds of thousands of computers. "Spam will continue to be a global problem for as long as it makes money for the spammers," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant, explained in a statement. "It makes commercial sense for the criminals to continue if even a tiny proportion of recipients clicks on the links."
The most exploited vulnerabilities tend to be Adobe Reader and Internet Explorer, but a rising target for exploits is Java, according to a report to be released on Wednesday by M86 Security Labs. Of the 15 most exploited vulnerabilities observed by M86 Security Labs during the first half of this year, four involved Adobe Reader and five in Internet Explorer, the lab wrote in its latest security report for January through June 2010. Also on the Top 15 list were vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Access Snapshot Viewer, Real Player, Microsoft DirectShow, SSreader, and AOL SuperBuddy. Most of the exploits observed had been first reported more than a year earlier and were addressed by vendors, "highlighting the need to keep software updated with the latest versions and patches," the report said. More Java-based vulnerabilities have been actively exploited, reflecting attackers' attraction to Java's popularity and broad install base. In the most common attack scenario, browsers visiting a legitimate Web site are redirected by a hidden iFrame or JavaScript to a malicious Web page that hosts a malicious Java applet, according to the report. "Java is the next low-hanging fruit for attackers," says Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer at eEye Digital Security. Meanwhile, attackers are finding new ways to dodge malware detection mechanisms, the M86 report concluded. "Over the last few months, we have observed a new technique of code obfuscation that combines JavaScript and Adobe's ActionScript scripting language," which is built into Flash, the report said.
Kansas City, MO - infoZine - Beth Phillips, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a New Jersey man pleaded guilty in federal court today to his role in a nationwide e-mail spamming case that victimized students at hundreds of colleges and universities across the United States, including the University of Missouri. Paul Zucker, 57, of Wayne, New Jersey, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Howard F. Sachs to the charge contained in an April 23, 2009, federal indictment. By pleading guilty today, Zucker admitted that he participated in a spam e-mail scheme that, from January 2004 to April 2009, targeted hundreds of colleges and universities across the United States. Conspirators developed e-mail extracting programs, which they used to illegally harvest more than 8 million student e-mail addresses from servers at colleges and universities across the United States. According to today’s plea agreement, conspirators used this database of e-mail addresses to send targeted spam e-mails selling various products and services to those students. Zucker admitted that he provided proxies (computer servers that allow clients to make indirect network connections to other computers in order to camouflage the originating source of an e-mail), which were intended to be used both inside and outside of the United States for the purpose of sending spam e-mail messages.
The amount of spam the UK is producing has surged, causing Britain to take fourth place in Sophos' 'Dirty Dozen' list of the top spam-producing countries. The security firm revealed the UK produced 4.6 percent of the world's spam during the second quarter of 2010. That's a vast increase from last when Britain had slipped out of the top 12. The US held onto the number one spot in the list of the countries that relay the most spam, accounting for 15.2 percent of global spam, up from 13.1 percent the previous quarter. India was ranked second as its produces 7.7 percent of the world's spam, while Brazil came third, producing 5.5 percent of spam distributed around the globe. "It's sad to see spam relayed via compromised European computers on the rise - the UK, France, Italy and Poland have all crept up the rankings since the start of the year," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
Received a spam e-mail lately? No matter where you are in the world, statistically speaking, a report finds that it's most likely to have come from the United States. Indeed, according to security firm Sophos, which released the study, in the second quarter of 2010, 15.2% of all global spam messages emanated from the United States, an increase from the 13.1% seen in the first quarter of 2010. Rounding out the top five list of global spam-generating countries were India (7.7%), Brazil (5.5%), the United Kingdom (4.6%), and South Korea (4.2%). On a more regional level, from the first to second quarter of 2010, Europe overtook Asia for the sheer volume of spam being generated, reported Sophos. Today, 35% of all spam arrives via European PCs, followed by computers in Asia (30.9%), North America (18.9%), South America (11.5%), and Africa (2.5%). The problem with spam, beyond the annoyance factor, is twofold. First, "spam is becoming increasingly malicious -- not just advertising unwanted goods, but spreading links to malicious websites and computer-infecting malware," according to a statement released by Sophos.
A yet-unseen malware variant dubbed "Typhoid adware" could allow cyberattackers to prey on portable computer users tethered to unsecured WiFi connections at Internet cafes and other public places. This potential threat is lurking wherever consumers gather to use free Internet access points. The hidden new threat has none of the telltale symptoms of traditional infections, and it functions as a twist on the notorius "Man-in-the-middle" vulnerability, according to a team of computer science researchers at Canada's University of Calgary. These researchers named this potential threat after Typhoid Mary. The malware resembles the typhoid fever carrier who spread the disease to dozens of people in the New York area in the early 1900s. Adware is software code that users inadvertantly allow into their computers when they download infected files like fancy toolbars or free screen savers, or when they visit infected Web sites. Typhoid adware needs a wireless Internet cafe or other area where users share a non-encrypted wireless connection. "We've not yet seen it in the wild. But it is something we are expecting to see. The reason is so many people bring their computers to centralized wireless locations. The bad guys are interested in making money, so centralized locations are a great opportunity for them," John Aycock, associate professor in the computer science deptartment at the University of Calgary, told TechNewsWorld.
If you think you get too much spam, try visiting the second floor of the Federal Trade Commission building in Washington. That's where a computer server holds the world's largest collection of spam e-mail—314 million messages, with 200,000 more arriving every day. The machine sits in the agency's Internet lab, a bunker crammed with electronic devices that help investigators hunt down spammers, spyware makers, and identity thieves. Set up by Woodrow Wilson in 1914 as an antitrust watchdog, the FTC has steadily expanded its mandate to shield consumers from fraud and other deceptive business practices. Today it oversees everything from funeral homes to a national do-not-call registry for telemarketers. While antitrust and financial scams still top its agenda, the agency has taken fraud fighting digital over the past decade. It shut down spyware rings and outfits like 3FN, a Belize operation responsible for half of global spam until last year. "We're worried about fraudsters who can use the anonymity of technology...to steal money or to cheat people in ways that are hard to detect," says David Vladeck, head of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection. One year into his job as the nation's top scam-buster, Vladeck is targeting threats to users of social networks and mobile devices. He has convened roundtables with Silicon Valley executives, and in June he completed work on a mobile forensics lab where staff attorneys and investigators sniff out problematic apps and Web sites using handheld devices.
