We all know that botnets are nasty conflagrations of unsuspecting peers, all ruthlessly controlled by bot herders and their C&C servers. And if there’s any one thing that we’ve learned about botnets, it’s that they’re the gold standard for anyone bent on unleashing mayhem on a world that’s become far too reliant on interconnectivity. But up until now, botnets have generally been understood to be prevalent on Windows machines, with Mac and Linux pulling up the rear as newbies to the party. And while it’s true that both of the former platforms have presented themselves as candidates for a career in botism, the sheer number of Windows PCs out there makes Windows the natural platform of choice. After all, that’s what botnets are all about. Numbers.

The U.S., along with Canada, the United Kingdom and several other countries, refused to sign the UN’s Internet Treaty that was ratified by 89 other countries. The treaty, designed to regulate the internet and unite countries in the fight against …

  Poland has become a lead provider of the world’s spam volume, overtaking China and moving into the top 10. Nearly 3% of the global spam volume comes from Poland. The rising spam numbers are blamed on Polish companies who …

As the year winds down, many organizations are looking for new initiatives to bring in the New Year. As email administrators fighting spam and phishing should be at the top of our lists. To effectively protect our users and resources against email borne threats, here is a list of projects that can help your organization better fight cyber criminals who attack you through your inbox.

Gmail, that flagship product almost every single one of us uses with either an @gmail.com account or a vanity domain backed by Gmail, is going through what I can only call a series of revolutionary changes that will be bad for many of us.

The number of service changes, realignments, and deprecated features that have occurred this year may spell the end of Gmail as we know it. Why is this bad? Well, in addition to being arguably one of the best free email services available, for many it is also one of the most effective options at protecting users from spam. As they disable services, move options to their for-pay business products, and generally change up the service, they may be driving many of us to other services, whose spam protection may not be as good.

While Gmail has been free for me to use for the decade or more that I have had it, so part of me feels I really shouldn’t complain, I can’t help but feel disappointed that so many things are changing, and continue to change. Let’s review the announcements that have come out in the past year or so.

Like Santa Claus and his cadre of industrious elves, spammers don’t take time off for the holidays. Unlike the jolly old elf and his posse, however, the email-happy scam artists are devious, black hearted little children who deserve giant lumps of coal. This is no truer than this time of the year, when retail sales explode, and the average gift buyer tries to stay ahead of the game by stumbling through the dizzying maze of online shopping opportunities. Online purchases require shipping, and spammers know that, too. So it shouldn’t be surprising, even if it is disheartening, that there are dark souls out there capitalizing on the probability that their targets might have ordered something – perhaps the Clapper or Chia Pet that I clamor for every year and, sadly, never get – and will become the proverbial fly to the spammer’s spider.

That’s why, in the confusing mayhem of the holiday season, anyone who uses email should be aware of the latest scam, this one in the form of a very realistic looking email that appears to come from Federal Express. Being reported by several sources, the bogus email appears to be the real thing, FedEx logo and all, with a notification that the recipient has a parcel they need to pick up.

A new spam campaign is exploiting several mobile phone companies to target users in Australia and Germany. The messages pretend to be MMS messages from popular carriers Telstra and Vodafone, and ask recipients to open the included attachment to read them.

If the recipients open the attachments, malware is installed, and when it’s installed it connects to a remote server and downloads even more malware. The malware takes over the computer, steals personal information, and most likely connects the infected computer to a botnet so it can pump out more malicious spam, and it’s specially configured and encrypted to avoid detection.

There’s a new round of spam hitting mailboxes world-wide, and filters seem to be slow to pick up on this. Since most of this new spam appears to be phishing attacks, ensuring your users are aware and know how to recognize these new attacks will be key in ensuring your users and their systems remain secure.

  Facebook has won yet another lawsuit against a spammer and walked away with a hefty judgment in their favor, but does anyone care? Even Facebook themselves admit their victory doesn’t mean much and their chances of collecting are slim. “Does Facebook …

When discussing email security, the terms spam and phishing often get thrown around interchangeably. There is good reason for this; both represent unwanted email messages and the same tactics can be used to deliver both types of email messages in mass quantities.

These traits, combined with the obvious fact that both are email borne threats, make it easy for someone to lump the two together. However as the sophistication of email borne attacks increase, and the level of threat grows higher, it is important to understand the difference between the two and end the confusion.