http://www.allspammedup.com Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:07:35 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sleazy informercial king Kevin Trudeau’s 30-day jail sentence has been stayed by the courts. He was slammed with it for orchestrating a spam email campaign designed to influence the judge in his case. He’s currently on trial in Civil Court fighting a complaint by the FTC that the ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/king-of-informercial-scams-avoids-jail-for-spamming-judge/ Look out Waledec, Zeus and Conficker! Chuck Norris is in town. A new botnet named after the iconic action star is targeting and infecting routers, or as one writer joked “The Chuck Norris botnet doesn’t infect routers, it stares them down until they infect themselves.” The botnet, first discovered by ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/new-chuck-norris-botnet-on-the-loose/ A highly desirable goal of businesses and web users is the complete eradication of spam from the internet.  That is perhaps a bit too much to hope for, but certainly the goal of reducing spam is something we can all keep working towards. One of the more effective methods of reducing ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/could-better-uri-filtering-cure-email-spam/ Microsoft notched an important legal victory this past week. A court awarded them a restraining order that has effectively cut Waledec off at the knees. The decision was the result of a lawsuit filed on February 22nd and will result in traffic being cut off to 277 domains that hold ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/microsoft-slays-waledec/ Over the past week there have been two instances of banks and customers suing over phishing attacks. In the first, Texas-based Hillary Machinery Inc, fell victim to a phishing attack and had over $800,000 stolen from their account. Their bank, PlainsCapital, was able to recover around $600,000, but when Hillary ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/bankcustomer-lawsuits-over-phishing-scams-rising/ 3000 credit card numbers belonging to customers of electronics retailer Small Dog Electronics have been compromised in a data breach. The breach left the sensitive data exposed for almost a month between late December and late January. The company claims it is PCI compliant and that it was subjected to ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/3000-credit-cards-compromised-in-data-breach/ [caption id="attachment_2237" align="alignright" width="300" caption="SPF is good but not perfect at flagging spam."][/caption] How effective is sender authentication in contributing to the fight against spam? A recent analysis of Microsoft's email volumes revealed some interesting findings on the subject. The analysis conducted by Terry Zink studied the impact of two sender authentication ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/sender-authentication-effective-but-no-panacea-against-spam/ Virtualization has been a growing trend in business computing over the last few years.  Companies are able to use virtualization to reduce costs and improve efficiency.  What started at the server level is also infiltrating desktop computing, with virtualized desktops now showing up in a lot of environments. Another recent trend ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/will-virtualization-protect-businesses-from-botnet-infection/ A new phishing attack launched by Zeus has taken aim at military personnel and intelligence officials in several countries including the US. The spammers behind the attack exploited a trusted security firm and sent fake messages pretending to be from the firm. Using social engineering tricks they sent messages to ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/military-personnel-targeted-by-zeus/ A widespread cyber attack that started 18 months ago has affected nearly 2,500 businesses and government agencies. Led by a Zeus variant, it infiltrates corporate and government networks and steals passwords, log on credentials, banking info and other confidential data. The Zeus botnet has over 74,000 infected PCs under its control ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/03/nearly-2500-companies-hacked-in-ongoing-cyberattack/ A San Francisco law firm has found itself the target of a disturbed spammer. A woman named Leslie Brodie has been spamming a “petition” to law firms and law students across the country. The petition claims to be part of a campaign to “End racism/sexism in U.S. law firms” and ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/disturbed-spammer-targets-law-firm/ [caption id="attachment_2211" align="alignright" width="291" caption="NoScript is a free Mozilla extension that can counter drive-by infections."][/caption] One of most frightening threats facing Web surfers is the drive-by infection. The thought that their computer could be infected just by entering a Web site is a sobering one to many websters. Peace of mind, ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/boffins-releasing-tool-to-foil-drive-by-attacks/ The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has released new figures that put the average volume of email spam on the internet at 90%, peaking as high as 94.2% in recent years. Jerry Upton, MAAWG Executive Director said “We’ve been sitting at a stalemate for probably two to three years.  Taking out ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/the-spam-statemate/ It comes as no surprise that scammers have been quick to exploit the 2010 Winter Olympic Games for their own benefit. Spam claiming to have exclusive videos of events like the tragic death of Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili have been spreading. The links lead to malicious sites pushing fake anti-virus ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/hackers-pumping-out-olympics-spam/ A notorious hacker who ran an underground site that was a popular hangout spot for hackers, carders, scammers, spammers, and other cybercriminals was slammed with a 13 year prison sentence for his part in a series of credit card scams that cost the US $86 million. Max Ray Vision was also ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/hacker-gets-13-years-in-prison/ A new botnet called Spy Eye has an interesting twist. Once installed it searches for traces of the Zeus Trojan, and if found, deletes it. Called “Kill Zeus”, the feature is meant to give Spy Eye exclusive control over the infected computer. It’s also capable of stealing data as it ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/new-botnet-targets-zeus/ [caption id="attachment_2171" align="alignright" width="257" caption="Privacy holes in Google Buzz could attract spammers."][/caption] Google is scrambling to patch the privacy holes in its Buzz application launched last week, hopefully before spammers turn the social network into a gold mine for their repugnant activities. When introduced last Tuesday, the yawning flaws in Buzz could ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/google-buzz-socnet-or-spam-magnet/ The security of social networks was thrust into the spotlight yet again this week with the successful hack of the Twitter Grader application run by Hubspot, a maker of social media and internet marketing tools. The Twitter Grader application uses an algorithm to calculate, or grade, a Twitter user’s ranking among ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/twitter-grader-hack-highlights-social-network-spam-risks/ The Conficker worm shut down the Manchester UK police station for 3 days earlier this month. It forced police officers to rely on other jurisdictions to access the country’s criminal data base as the Manchester station was disconnected from the UK Police National Computer Network. Investigators blame an infected USB ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/conficker-worm-cripples-police-department/ An add-on program that allegedly infected the computers of 4000 users of the Firefox Web browser was clean and malware free, according to the maker of the application. According to Sothink Software, the add-on, Web Video Downloader 4.0, was misidentified as a malware carrier due to a compression utility called Armadillo ... http://www.allspammedup.com/2010/02/firefox-add-on-was-clean-maker-says/