To show how serious they are about their attempts to eradicate spam, fifteen companies have joined forces to help fight one of the most dangerous spam tactics of all – phishing.

This collective, known as the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC), has come together to develop standards that they promise will help combat the practice of spammers sending emails that appear to come from a legitimate organization.

According to DMARC, its work:

“draws upon a history of private industry collaboration with 18 months of dedicated work, to outline an enhanced vision for email authentication that can scale up to today’s Internet needs.”

Who Is DMARC?

The group of fifteen who have dedicated resources to this fight consists of:

• Agari
• American Greetings
• AOL
• Bank of America
• Cloudmark
• Comcast
• Facebook
• Fidelity Investments
• Google
• LinkedIn
• Microsoft
• PayPal
• Return Path
• The Trusted Domain Project
• Yahoo!

And just what exactly they are trying to do is create a specification that allows senders and receivers of email messages to share information with each other about their authentication infrastructure to make sure that emails come from the organization they claim to be.

According to their website, DMARC attempts to address this by providing coordinated, tested methods for:

Domain owners to:

• Signal that they are using email authentication (SPF, DKIM),
• Provide an email address to gather feedback about messages using their domain – legitimate or not,
• A policy to apply to messages that fail authentication (report, quarantine, reject).

Email receivers to:

• Be certain a given sending domain is using email authentication,
• Consistently evaluate SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM(DomainKeys Identified Mail) along with what the end user sees in their inbox,
• Determine the domain owner’s preference (report, quarantine or reject) for messages that do not pass authentication checks,
• Provide the domain owner with feedback about messages using their domain.

So What Makes DMARC Different?

Most companies already employ some type of analysis on incoming email messages to include SPF and DKIM so this specification isn’t turning to something new. In fact, they recommend a continued approach employing other techniques such as high quality spam filters and rate limiters to form a well rounded solution to fighting spam.

What DMARC is trying to do is to standardize and streamline the process of analyzing messages because participating companies can rely on the coordination of the group to establish trust when it comes to determining whether or not a sender is legitimate.

In plain English, DMARC looks to form a conglomerate of cooperation between email senders and receivers (the organizations like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, etc. not the individual users themselves) who share information about the emails they send to each other. Turning to the information made available to the group, it can be easier to see whether or not an email is spoofed spam or a legitimate message worthy of delivery.

Not only is it the hope that less spam will make it through, but that resources will be streamlined as a result of these efforts as well. Large datacenters could see a positive result if all goes as planned.

The Flipside

Of course not everyone is completely sold that DMARC’s work is a panacea when it comes to ending spoofing and spam.

John Levine, one of authors of the DKIM related Author Domain Signing Practices (ADSP) standard, had this to say in an interview with Information Week:

“It’s a good thing as far as it goes, but it does have some of the chronic Internet tendency to put a steel door on a cardboard box.” Like many security standards that are not mandatory, if it’s not implemented then it won’t fail. Neither DKIM nor SPF are at the point where a recipient can say that they will only accept messages that use them. Therefore you still need to keep your eyes open.”

Using Bank of America as an example, it was pointed out in the same article that to fight phishing and spoofing in the past domains suggestive of the name Bank of America, as well as typos, were purchased en masse. Because the pool is so large, Bank of America was not able to purchase every domain available. For example, wwwbankofamerica.com is not owned by them.

So if an email arrives from support@wwwbankofamerica.com it won’t fail any of the checks from SPF or DKIM because it is not a spoofed email address. By all accounts, the sender is legitimate.

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Will DMARC Have Much Impact on Spam?

Malware developers seem to appreciate a little humor when it comes to naming their schemes. One of the latest email scams to invade inboxes everywhere is no exception, it seems, and the FBI has been quick to let businesses know that if they don’t keep their eyes open for a phishing scam originating in an email from FDIC, NACHA and the Federal Reserve, opening the mail’s attachment could be one of the most devastating choices in a young 2012. Worse yet, this new scheme appears to be linked to the Lord of the Greek gods – or its eponymous malware, anyway.

‘Game over’ is never a good thing, whether it means that your last ship has been destroyed and your quarter spent, whether it’s a lame and overused witticism that yet again has found its way into the mouth of Hollywood’s action hero du jour, and yes, even when cyber criminals are searching for just the right name for their latest piece of malware. While we’re not averse to debating the first two, our interest here is firmly with the latter. It seems the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation shares that interest, as evidenced by a security bulletin earlier this month that identifies a new email scam, one which cyber criminals have decided to call – what else? – Gameover.

Gameover is a phishing attack that appears in the form of spam emails spoofing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve Bank, or the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA). Like a multitude of others, the scheme preys on users’ fears and/or lack of vigilance, informing them that there has been a problem with their bank account or an ACH transaction (ACH stands for Automated Clearing House, a network for financial institutions in the U.S.). Sufficiently frightened, recipients are encouraged to click the included link, which instead of resolving the issue, takes the user to a malicious site where the Gameover malware is executed.

The malware has been identified as a variant of ZeuS, a notorious piece of malware which has been responsible for stealing financial information through the practice of keylogging for a number of years. Once activated, the cyber crooks can steal banking information such as account numbers and passwords.

As if that wasn’t enough…

More than just a keylogger, however, ZeuS (and coincidentally, Gameover) has an added payload. According to the FBI:

“After the perpetrators access your account, they conduct what’s called a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack using a botnet, which involves multiple computers flooding the financial institution’s server with traffic in an effort to deny legitimate users access to the site — probably in an attempt to deflect attention from what the bad guys are doing.”

But wait – there’s more!

In what sounds like a novel involving international intrigue, FBI investigations have been able to trace the attacks as far as to jewelers, as the stolen funds are used to purchase “precious stones and expensive watches from high-end jewelry stores”. The crooks contact the jeweler, tell them what they’d like to purchase and inform them that they will wire the money the following day. The following day, a “money mule” – a person involved in the money laundering part of the crime – shows up at the jewelry store to pick up the merchandise. The jeweler confirms that the money (the stolen money from the spam scheme) is in their account and upon doing so, turns the merchandise over to the mule, who in turn delivers the merchandise to the crooks or converts it into cash that upon being transferred, is effectively laundered.

Wow – It really is the stuff of imagination, but even more interesting is that the FBI has suggested that the mules could be unsuspecting victims of those omnipresent ‘work at home’ schemes that we see everywhere. While the federal agency has confirmed that many of the mules are willing participants, it has also noted that an increasing number are likely people who have succumbed to these schemes and have been unwittingly recruited into laundering money stolen from victims of the spam scheme.

Be on the lookout for this one and advise your staff ASAP. At very most, it could be a story worthy of a novel. At very least, it could save you and your users plenty of headaches and lost funds.

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FBI Declares ‘Gameover’, Link to ZeuS

The year’s off to a rousing start, with all sorts of interesting security news this week: Wikipedia led a temporarily successful foray against SOPA and PIPA by joining numerous websites that went dark for a day; the founder of Megaupload had his hands slapped when law enforcement officials told him resoundingly, “no, you can’t pirate copyrighted material” – insult was heaped upon injury when dozens of expensive cars were towed away to show him they were right; and Koobface – the Facebook botnet that has been harassing Zuckerberg for years – was taken down by its own creators after the Facebook gang teamed up with The New York Times to uncover and publish the identities of the worm’s owners. To round off the week, QR codes (like the one in the image here) may just be the latest form of spam, and news out of the Twitterverse suggests that Darwin’s cardinal rule is not only true, it’s actually a dire prophecy of our impending extinction.

The year’s less than a month old and it may already be shaping up as ‘the year of anything goes’. Topping the headlines was a mass protest against seemingly inevitable anti-piracy legislation SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect I.P. Act), as innumerable websites intentionally went dark on January 18. Led by students’ greatest friend and perpetual source of dubious information Wikipedia, the activist movement irritated web surfers across the globe and scored one for the little guy as the bureaucrats in Washington, DC backed off the proposed legislation and shelved the bills, albeit temporarily. It’s practically inevitable that some wily spammer will take advantage of this controversy, so keep your eyes open and watch your back.

In a related story and in the spirit of fishy timing (i.e., the same week as the aforementioned protests), Megaupload founder, Kim Dotcom, was carted off along with several other geniuses who figured they would get away with providing a conduit for copyrighted material, all the while skimming millions of dollars off the illegal activity and thumbing their noses at the FBI. German national Mr. Dotcom, lamented as his lavish New Zealand mansion was raided and dozens of vintage cars were hauled away as the spoils of war. Again, there’s more here than meets the eye, especially now that Anonymous has its back up.

In an LMAO moment, individuals responsible for Koobface – a nasty piece of malware that has been frustrating Facebook and Twitter users for years – have taken down their own command and control server after Facebook teamed up with The New York Times to uncover and embarrass five of the founders – Russian nationals living in St. Petersburg, Florida. The named individuals have scrambled to scrub their online profiles, but it’s highly doubtful that erasing their cyber identities will have much of an effect in the real world, where police carry real guns and real handcuffs.

Are QR codes the newest spam threat? Some people think so. QR – or Quick Response – codes were developed in the automotive industry and have been used for a while. Slowly entering the mainstream  over the past couple of years, they are in wide use in Japan, the UK and the US, amongst other countries. Popular because of their fast readability and relatively high storage capacity (compared to bar codes), the increased use of smartphones with cameras and QR reading apps have made the codes a prime target for manufacturers and retailers; heck, even Google’s looking at getting into the game by using QR codes as a secure login method.  The problem is that QR codes can contain virtually any information, meaning that they are already being exploited by scammers and spear phishers. Keep an eye on this one, folks – and think twice before you take a picture of that code staring you in the face.

Finally, from the Twitterverse, here’s one that, no matter how much you shake your head, won’t rid that sickening feeling that the human race is on a collision course with extinction. Perhaps a case of ‘you can’t spell Twitter without ‘twit’, this recent article shows just how careless – or ignorant, or both – web users really are. Get this: over a twenty-four hour period, more than 11,000 Twitter users shared their email addies with the rest of the world. A safe practice if we were living in Thomas More’s Utopia, but it’s not the case if you reside anywhere on Earth, which is rife with people who would just love to use that information against you. This is just a guess, but it looks like spear phishing season is open and Twitter is the local watering hole.

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Week in Review: You Can’t Spell Twitter Without ‘Twit’

This week, a phishing attack landed in the inboxes of several US government agencies, spoofing the US government’s cyber security watchdog and response agency. Complete with attachments, the e-mail’s payload was a nasty little virus that has already been tracked back to Mother Russia. To make matters a little embarrassing, perhaps, it’s not enough that the agency which was spoofed in the attack has reported a disruption of its own systems, but it’s also the government body responsible for identifying and mitigating just this type of thing.

On January 11, news erupted of a rather malicious little spoof email that circulated through the mail servers of several national, state and local government agencies and even private sector employees. The scam in question was an email pretending to be the product of US-CERT, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Sent with fake source addresses that included soc@us-cert.gov and the subject line Phishing incident report call number: PH000000XXXXXXX and an attachment named US-CERT Operation Center Report XXXXXXX.zip, a nasty little file which was anything but a report. In fact, after some quick investigation, the attachment – which executes a file named US-CERT Operation CENTER Reports.eml.exe – was discovered to be a variant of the infamous Zeus virus known as ‘Ice-IX’, a keylogger that steals banking and other personal information. As if that isn’t enough, the worm also bypasses firewalls and other protection schemes.

Oh, the Irony!

US-CERT responding by doing what it’s supposed to do: it posted a bulletin and notified agencies. And while not admitting that anyone at US-CERT actually opened the little bugger, an operator at the agency has stated

“difficulty receiving emails due to the phishing campaign”

according to SC Magazine. A little embarrassing, considering that this is just the type of thing US-CERT has been mandated to protect against, it’s a forgivable fumble considering that the scam artists continue to get wilier and more creative in their attacks.

In an ‘it never hurts to state the obvious’ moment, US-CERT included the following advisories in its security bulletin:

US-CERT encourages users to do the following to reduce the risks associated with this and other phishing campaigns:

• Do not open the attachments in email messages from unknown sources.
• Install anti-virus software and keep virus signatures files up-to-date.
• Refer to Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams (pdf) documents for more information on avoiding email scams.
• Refer to the Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks document for information on social engineering attacks.
• Refer to Recovering from Viruses, Worms, and Trojan Horses document for additional information on how to recover from malware.

From Russia with Malice

The story gets a little more interesting from here, when Nextgov.com reported on Wednesday that

“Researchers outside of US-CERT traced the malicious software to a botnet – a remotely-controlled network of infected computers – that is taking commands from computers located in Russia.”

It’s not clear why researchers outside of US-CERT traced the location – it would seem natural that US-CERT was capable of doing that sort of thing. Isn’t it logical to assume that’s what the “response” part of their name is for?

Regarding the attack and its location, there’s clearly no love here, only malice. So why was an e-mail from Russia so specifically targeted at and around US-CERT and US government agencies? It’s extremely unlikely that this was state sponsored – the method used and speed at which it was detected suggest something far too ham-handed to be anything that nefarious. So taking that into consideration, the incident still poses something of an oddity. If a group, say organized crime – which is alive and well in Mother Russia – was responsible for the attack, what could they possibly hope to gain by phishing government agencies in the US? And if it was some cyberdude named Boris, who figured he’d take time from his daily routine of scamming innocents to pry into US-CERT’s activities, he certainly isn’t the brightest cyberdude in cyberspace.

It’s very mysterious, this one, and it will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes from the follow-up investigations.

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US-CERT Hooked by US-CERT Phishing Attack

Optimists often look for the most positive events over the year to attach to the label, The Year of…, realists however, take a different approach. And while 2012 is still young and holds a lot of promise, this year could very well be known as the year of social spam.

Social spam is nothing new. In fact, spam first infiltrated Internet bulletin boards in 1994 to mark the first major commercial spam campaign when Laurence Carter and Martha Siegel, a husband and wife team of lawyers, posted bulk messages to Usenet groups advertising their immigration law services in what became known as Green Card spam.

Social interaction on today’s Internet is far more sophisticated than the simple posting of messages and hyperlinks however. Nowadays, spammers turn to social networks and guise their spam as links, content, video, audio and executable files.

The nature of social spam has also changed as the platforms that deliver these messages have also developed over time.

No longer is spam only used to deliver advertising and marketing messages alone. With a more sophisticated field on which to play, spammers have used social sites to not only deliver their advertising, but also malware that: steals credit card numbers, captures user names and passwords and turns computers into zombies.

But if social spam has been a problem for so long, why would 2012 be any different? Take a look and see…

The Facebook Example

On January 4, 2012 the Wall Street Journal reported that social spam is on the rise and to combat this, social networks are hiring more staff to help fight this problem. Facebook was named specifically because according to reports, the volume of spam on Facebook is growing faster than its user base.

On Facebook, spam usually spreads when users are tricked into liking, and then sharing, content that is spam. This practice, known as like-jacking, usually works when a user’s computer is infected with malware that allows the spammer to take control of the user’s Facebook account.

The spammer then posts a message on your friend’s profile that would be interesting to others. Commonly, free dinner coupons are used as the bait as are offers for free iPads or other give aways.

When the user’s friends click on the free offer, they are instructed to download the coupons. These coupons actually contain malware that infects the computers of the user’s friends thus continuing the cycle.

Of course the malware does more than just spread itself via Facebook. It can be used to deliver Trojan horses, keystroke loggers, or any other type of malware.

And just how prevalent are these messages? By Facebook’s own admission, they block over 200 million malicious actions every day. In 2008 the company employed four engineers working to fight malicious use of their site. The same department today, named site integrity, now has 31 team members. Additionally, there are 46 people working on security 300 focused on user issues and over 1,000 others (engineers, lawyers, risk analysts, etc.) who help to fight spam on the site in other ways.

Others Not Immune

Of course other social networks and content sharing sites are hardly immune to the problem of social spam. Twitter has long been a hot bed for spammy posts created by malicious users.

Twitter, by nature, set itself up for spam from the very beginning. As a great way to share content to other like-minded users, Twitter allowed people to share short messages that were less than 140 characters long; short, sweet and to the point.

Since URLs were often lengthy, companies – including Twitter – developed URL shorteners. Now, http://www.allspammedup.com could become http://bit.ly/3KmvyZ to save precious character space.

The problem is, no one really knows if http://bit.ly/3KmvyZ will take you to All Spammed Up or a malicious web site.

Google also out how quickly spam could infiltrate even a carefully planned social network.

Originally opened through an invite only process, Google+ users found the site a welcome break from other social sites that had turned into spam havens. Since early adopters were tech savvy, spam was quickly reported and accounts spewing spam were shut down.

Then came the public release and the ability to create business pages and spammy comments and shares began to fold the network causing one well known legitimate marketing professional to comment:

Wow, Google+ must be taking off. Spotted not one but two pieces of comment spam today.

As users find it easier than ever to share content with their friends and family, spammers will find it easier to manipulate this process. Because we have become so trusting of the content our “friends” share with us, we never consider the fact that what may be the coolest thing on someone’s wall may just wind up infecting our computer.

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Is 2012 the Year of Social Spam?

In Part 2 of our look at what you can expect in the coming year, faint rumblings out of Japan suggest that one prediction from Part 1 of this article has already come true. If the very real prospect of becoming an innocent casualty of war isn’t enough to make you run backward toward the year that just passed, these bold predictions reveal how hackers will develop an even stronger sense of camaraderie, and how mobility is sure to become a four-letter word. And if you thought spamming and Internet scams made it personal in 2011, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

How about that? 2012 wasn’t even seven days old when news out of Japan this week revealed some eerie premonitions of the things to come and earmarks of a bold prediction made one week ago.  Engadget, ZD Net and other media outlets are reporting that the Japanese government has been working in concert with Fujitsu since 2008 to develop a powerful ‘cyber weapon’ – a piece of software that, upon the detection of a cyber attack (such as DDoS, for example) tracks the attack back to the source.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Sure, until you consider that the software also attacks and disables every machine it finds along the trail. The goal, Engadget reports:

“is to stop the spread of a malicious piece of code by finding and shutting down, not just the source, but all middleman PCs that are also now potential hosts. In some admittedly extreme scenarios this weapon could potentially spiral out of control, taking out far more computers than intended.”

Hmm… Botnets are nothing more than large numbers of unsuspecting computers carrying out their attacks at the behest of the infector and ignorance of the computer’s owner. Japan’s little toy, while it sounds like it might be fun to take for a spin, could have the unpleasant and unprecedented effect of being the cause of some serious collateral damage. Casualties of war? Here’s a tip for everyone: while you still have a chance, give that fave desktop or laptop of yours a great big hug before it’s too late.

1. Hackers of the World, Unite

Robin Hood met Mafia Boy last year as hacktivism took center stage. Indeed, 2011 was an entertaining year for anyone who followed the exploits of Anonymous and LulzSec. The drama unfolded like a kabuki play born in the mind of Ken Kesey and brought to life by a troupe of mimes with Tourette Syndrome, and there were even a few arrests along the way to make this reality show really…ahem… arresting.

Prediction: We will see some new hacking activity from these groups, with some high profile web takedowns in the process. While that’s not a stretch, this is: hacker groups like Anonymous and LulzSec will grow in size substantially, resembling an ‘occupy’ type movement that will take the war online. The civil and social unrest of 2011 will turn to face the financial behemoth that is the Internet.

2. Mobility Means Vulnerability

If we learned anything about spam in 2011, it’s that spam is like that proverbial bum of a brother-in-law who’s been living in your basement for the past two years. It’s not going away, good luck making it work for you, and you will be out-of-pocket at some point. Spammers continued to use every means at their disposal in 2011, with SMS spam becoming a real pain in the neck. Security flaws in the two most popular smartphone platforms – iOS and Android – just accented what we already suspected: that spammers and purveyors of malware had taken their show on the road.

Prediction: 2012 will see a massive increase in mobile spam, and mobile devices will become the swords upon which we will live or die unless we get mobile security under control.

3. It’s Nothing Personal…Well, Actually, It Is

A significant development in spam and phishing in 2011 was the way in which the scam artists were getting smarter; you know, smarter in much the same way that a chunk of igneous rock living at the bottom of a fetid riverbed is smarter than a rotting patch of lichen hanging for dear life to the side of an oak tree. Like it or not, the scambags are wilier, finding new and innovative ways to pick your pocket without actually residing in the same time zone.

Prediction: The scambags will become even cleverer in their assaults, finding new methods to lull people into a false sense of security. How this will occur remains to be seen, but our bold prediction is that it will most likely involve highly targeted, multilevel campaigns where the scammer will use detailed knowledge of the targets, and multiple contact methods like email, phone, SMS and even snail mail to enact their evil schemes.

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Bold Predictions for 2012 (Part 2)

In a turn of events appropriate for the most tumultuous year in cybercrime, 2011’s body is barely cold and we’re already smelling something suspicious from its decomposing carcass. Rumors of two worms, one well-known and the other relatively new on the scene, have some of us wondering what will happen next in 2012, and the year has only just begun. In an attempt to put the preceding year into perspective, we take a look at what might be in store for the new year and beyond with some bold and not so far-fetched predictions for 2012.

PREDICTION: A Shiny New Worm with Every Census Report, Tax Return and Piece of Monetary Currency

First up for 2012 is a prediction that all bets will be off when it comes to understanding the nature – and source – of some of the most insidious malware in the known universe. In fact, the threat and very nature of the state-sponsored malware will only get more confusing, and most likely more disturbing, as we discover where and how it’s being used.

Discovered in 2010, Stuxnet was in the news again in 2011. A worm designed to target and damage industrial control systems (like the kind found in nuclear plants), it has been a source of great debate over who created it and what its ultimate purpose represented; but few could argue that with more than forty percent of Stuxnet’s infections landing in Iran, the nation was most likely the target from the get-go. Russia and others wasted no time pointing the finger squarely at the United States and Israel as the benefactors of the worm, which surely must be state-sponsored.

It seemed inconceivable that anything could top the news that broke late in the year about Stuxnet’s connection to Conficker, suggesting that the latter, a notorious botnet, was used to deliver the payload for Stuxnet. If rumors are true that Stuxnet is state-sponsored, the implication that spam might have been part of the delivery method can and must only leave a bad taste in people’s mouths.

As 2011 wheezed out its last few painful breaths however, a new development occurred in this bizarre tale, as it was revealed that ongoing research by Kaspersky Labs on Stuxnet uncovered a direct link between Stuxnet and Duqu – a worm, discovered only in September, which shares many of the attributes of Stuxnet. In fact, media outlets are reporting that the worms are suggestive of an ‘arsenal’ of malware that has been in development as early as 2007. The code kernel has been dubbed ‘Tilded’, in recognition of the author’s habit of using filenames that begin with ‘~d’.

The Prediction: Keep your eyes open for Tilded. We will continue to see new pieces of the puzzle unveil, and they will point at the government of a country – or perhaps multiple countries working in concert – all but providing conclusive proof of the party (or parties) responsible for this new and nefarious form of warfare. What will make this story even more notorious, however, is when it becomes clear that an unsuspecting public has been a major delivery mechanism for this 21^st century warfare, through the use of spam, malware, and botnets. And if that is true, it could very well be the case that some of those spammers you curse on a daily basis are actually nation states using spam to mask their cyber intelligence activities.

PREDICTION: The Cloud Will Get Stormy

While the Cloud was one of those recurring themes that flew, for the most part, under the radar in 2011, companies like Apple and Microsoft continued to push it like it is a silver bullet and a cure-all for everything that ails small companies to major corporations.

The Prediction: 2012 will see at least three Cloud-based security events, most likely linked in some way to spam, malware, hack attacks or compromised mobile devices. Furthermore, they will be high profile events, targeting Fortune 1000 or Global 1000 companies, or less likely a government agency. Anonymous will take credit for at least one of the breaches, and there will be a link with one of the breaches to North Korea and/or China.

Next week, in Part 2 of this story, we’ll take a look at some other bold and controversial predictions for 2012, and how we can learn something from 2011 – but only if we’re ready and willing to listen to it.

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Looking Back At 2011 And Bold Predictions for 2012 (Part 1)

While the fat man in the red suit has already signed-off on his naughty or nice list, there’s one nasty little child holed up somewhere in Russia who needs to get a large lump of coal in his stocking this year. Or if not a lump of coal, then a shiny new pair of law enforcement-grade handcuffs.

What is it about this time of the year that brings out the worst in people? Religious beliefs aside, there’s something about this time of the year that should make all people take a deep breath, send a little good will out to fellow humans, and, well… just smile, dammit. Unfortunately, for spammers and scammers, it appears that there’s no room for taking time off over the holidays and treat others with the dignity and respect that most people recognize as a necessary element of a living, breathing society.

Case in point: The Register reported earlier this month that three anti-scam sites were inundated with a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack over several days, effectively rendering the sites useless. According to The Register:

“The sites – 419eater.com, scamwarners.com and aa419.org (Artists Against 419) – were swamped with junk traffic for several days. During the attack the sites’ administrators turned to blogs, Facebook and other alternative channels to distribute news of newly detected fake payment sites and other urgent anti-fraud information.”

According to an anonymous Register reader:

“These websites and their users provide excellent exposure for online fraud activities and have been responsible for allowing thousands of prospective victims to detect a scam in play, and get out before losses are incurred They also work actively to kill fake bank sites, fake freight forwarding sites and other criminal resources.”

The Register reported that two of the three sites were back in working order in a few days, but the story takes a nefarious turn from here. Early speculation was that a Russian scam artist was responsible for the attacks, and not long afterwards, someone over at ScamWarners contacted The Register and divulged that the attack:

“was perpetrated by a scammer who became angry at a topic posted on 419Eater, which exposed his scam. 419Eater.com was first attacked and ScamWarners began to publicise it via Twitter and Facebook. The next day [Thursday], ScamWarners was also attacked. The scammer then sent an email to me, threatening both ScamWarners and 419Eater. We were told to cease exposing their information and reporting their Amazon sites or we would both be eradicated from cyberspace.”

If that last sentence didn’t outrage you at least a little bit, go back and read it again. Is it necessarily foolish and naïve to believe that even scammers – scumbags who invest a significant amount of time into developing malware designed to bilk little old ladies living on fixed incomes out of their precious savings – might take a little time off during Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukah, Ashura, or whatever religious observance you prefer to…uhm…observe? Absolutely it is. One could assume that’s what bulbous men in red tights with fist-sized lumps of coal are for. But acceptance isn’t enough. This is a time of the year “when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices”, as Dickens pointed out; yet the inhumanity of the deeds of a few are enough to make this writer wonder how we continue to survive the ravages of human nature – in other words, ourselves.

It’s been a year fraught with cyber crime and cyber busts, with malicious attacks and new forms of spam; with new scams and chilling suggestions of things to come. For this week, anyway, most of us will rejoice at the presence of family and friends, and sadly, many will go hungry. Here’s hoping that in 2012, we will have a chance to see more of these scammers on our little blue-green orb find the other side of steel bars.

Next week: tune in for our top 10 list of popular torture methods for 2012.

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Lump of Coal Edition: When Scammers Attack

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and what better way to take a look back at the year in spam than poke a little fun at the moronic state of the crap that invades our inboxes? In a year that saw major security breaches, several high profile botnet takedowns, and an unprecedented surge in personalized scams and mobile spam, we stop to reflect upon it all and submit a simple postulate: what if Dr. Seuss had been a spammer?

As the year winds down to a close, it’s only basic human nature to look back at the year that just passed and reflect upon it. In the world of spamming and Internet scams, that’s bound to be a painfully long look, since this has been a year fraught with new scams, major cybercrime busts, and unprecedented levels of security threats. With mobile devices providing the newest threat opportunities, and SMS spam picking up a head of steam as scammers get creative, we must be even more vigilant when fighting spam-related threats.

What’s in store for 2012? One must shudder when imagining the possibilities. If anything like 2011, next year will represent an even more dangerous landscape, cluttered with mines and booby traps the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Dire prophecies and doomsday mentality aside, it doesn’t hurt to poke fun at spam once in a while, and during the holidays, no one is more fun than the venerable Theodor Seuss Geisel, known to adoring children and former children alike as Dr. Seuss. Like many households, it’s a holiday tradition around here to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, an annual ritual which inspired this writer to wonder: what if Dr. Seuss was still with us, and what if, ahem, wait for it…Dr. Seuss was a spammer?

The thought itself is sure to bring a smile to the face of anyone who has endured the miserable drivel that infests inboxes like brown marmorated stink bugs. Poorly written and replete with ludicrous stories that must have been contrived during bad acid trips, these emails often frustrate us, and occasionally make us smile by virtue of their sheer stupidity. What they do not do, however, is give us any confidence that the human race is poised to survive much longer, if this epidemic of oafishness is representative of the current state of the gene pool.

So without further ado, here’s a humble attempt at imagining what spam might be like, if written by Dr. Seuss:

The Spammer Who Stole Christmas?

Dear stranger, forgive me for this intrusion

I hope my letter will ease your confusion.

I will not, cannot state it enough

This is rough stuff, even a little tough.

There’s a Libyan prince who lost his good fortune

And my offer to you is a share of the portion.

I cannot get the funds out of my land

And I hope you will aid me by lending a hand.

You see, there are sums in excess of millions

If you give me your name, I’ll give you gazillions.

It’s okay to give me personal information

They don’t extradite criminals in my tiny nation.

Your bank account and credit cards are essential

They’re only for scamming and merely referential.

This is for good cause, I must admit

Send money now and show you commit.

I do not wish to enter a heated debate

Send it fast, send it now, it cannot wait.

The funds are for my stately Kenyan mansion

It’s in great need of a major expansion.

Happy Holidays to all!

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If Dr. Seuss Was a Spammer

Not a fun thing to deal with but it did get me thinking a bit more about how often individual accounts are compromised to send out spam.

Of the larger messaging services, Yahoo! Mail appeared to be the most susceptible according to an end-user survey by Commtouch with 27% of Yahoo’s users claiming to have had their account compromised. Facebook came in second with 23%, Gmail followed with 19% and Windows Live rounded out the list with 15% of people admitting that their accounts had been targeted at one time or another.

The most frightening statistic from this survey was that 62% of these people had no idea how their email account was compromised. This does not reflect carelessness on the victim’s part but instead, shows how the threat landscape has increased in sophistication.

It used to be you downloaded a malicious program that infected your email client and sent out messages to everyone in your inbox however with the malicious links appearing in social network feeds, legitimate web sites hosting malware, drive by downloads and cyber criminals snooping in on public Wi-Fi narrowing down where your credentials were stolen is akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

Why Your Personal Account is a Target

You would think that large corporate email accounts would provide a much more lucrative target for spammers. After all, if they can compromise a good number of addresses they will have much more to work with.

However, cyber criminals have long abandoned the mass spam tactics of the past. This is evidenced by the fact that the amount of email spam has reduced over the years, and trends show that this will likely continue.

People have learned not to respond, or act, when they are sent an arbitrary email message from an unknown account. Over the years, they have been warned and trained that if you don’t know the sender don’t trust the message.

Personal email accounts, for this very reason, have become much more attractive to spammers and cyber criminals. Instead of blanketing mailboxes with spam that generates extremely small returns, their email campaigns have become much more targeted.

Harvesting smaller amounts of personal accounts to send their junk may not be able to hit the sheer numbers they used to use, but the odds of someone opening the email and taking action are greater because of the trust factor.

What To Do When Your Account is Compromised

First and foremost, don’t say your account was hacked. Security experts and people who understand the definition of hacking don’t appreciate that term. Explain that your account was compromised.

Next, don’t be like the 23% of people who admitted in the Commtouch survey that they did nothing when finding out that their account was being used for nefarious purposes.

When you finally realize that something fishy is going on with your account take the following steps:

Update your anti-malware software.

You are going to scan your computer but if your signature files, or definitions, are out of date your security software very well could miss files that have infected your computer.

Boot your computer into safe mode and run scan your computer.

Many people automatically assume that you should change the password to your account first. However, if whoever compromised your email account did so by means of a keystroke logger that is still running on your computer then they will be informed of your new password. Clean your computer of any malware in safe mode before you do anything else.

Change your password.

Once your computer is malware-free you need to log into your email account and change the password. However make sure that you avoid using passwords you use to log into web sites or other types of accounts. This could very well be the place your password was stolen from since criminals know that people frequently use the same passwords over and over. Add to that the fact that many accounts use your email address as the username and you have a perfect mix for disaster.

Of course, you are going to want to also make sure you use a strong password consisting of a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.

Taking precautions will never completely eliminate the possibility that your email account will be taken over, but being smart and aware will certainly minimize the risk.

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When Spam Comes From a Friend

In a fine example of international relations, Russia and the United States exchanged gifts early this year when they announced that the two countries are entering a new level of cooperation on cyber threat analysis and the global war on cyber crime. Reports have it that the event was a festive affair, with borscht and Philly cheese steaks for all. The Russian and American Santa Clauses only got into a tiff once, when Ded Moroz, the Russian version of the jolly old elf, made a comment about his counterpart’s excessive waistline and predilection for butting into the gumbo line for seconds and thirds. The gift exchange was equally revealing, with the American delegation reportedly bursting into tears when memories of a painful childhood were wiped away with carefully wrapped Easy Bake Ovens and Tickle Me Elmos. To make matters worse, since neither side could reach agreement on a real or artificial tree, Denny’s graciously provided a chocolate waterfall – a poor choice in hindsight, since the American delegation is still recovering from the sugar highs.

Who said it isn’t the season to be jolly? Not the U.S. and Russia, who announced this week that the two countries are entering an unprecedented level of cooperation in the war against cyber crime. Reuters is reporting that the countries are planning an exchange of information on “technical threats” coming from the two countries, an interesting development considering the increasing strain on relations between the two nations.

Reuters reports that Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, explained that a series of mechanisms “aimed at confidence building and crisis prevention” are being developed to “cope with alarming events in cyberspace.” While not giving up the entire goose, she is quoted by Reuters as saying in an e-mail that new measures include:

“regular exchanges on technical threats that appear to emanate from one another’s territory [and] no-fail communications mechanisms to help prevent crisis escalation and build confidence.”

Whose confidence exactly is a bit of a mystery, but perhaps the two nations will unveil that little gem at their New Year’s Eve gala in Vegas.

Admittedly, such partnerships have been in place for a while, such as the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, but Hayden said that new initiatives are:

“cyber-specific and [the U.S.] would begin working with Moscow for the first time.”

Reuters points out that this development is nothing new, as U.S. Vice President Biden has been discussing potential joint ventures for the last month or so, but in a sound bite that will surely resonate through the ages, Biden stated:

“It’s a great deal harder to assess another nation’s cyber-capabilities than to count their tanks.”

So, what does it all mean? Well, even ill-informed cyber junkies know that Russia has been a significant source of problems in cyberspace, spam included. Whether this particular initiative will target spamming and scamming initiatives themselves or just the fallout from them – worms, botnets, phishing, and a litany of other unpleasantries – remains to be seen. Some might argue that spamming is a ‘white collar’ crime affecting Joe User and not befitting superpower focus and information sharing, but others would argue that the fallout from spam and its brethren actually rain hellfire down upon national security and international relations. At very least, they keep law enforcement agencies extremely busy and sometimes even left holding the bag. Recent suggestions that Stuxnet was delivered on the back of Conficker certainly leaves a bad taste in many mouths, not the least of which is Russia itself, which in September called out the U.S. and Israel over the insinuations.

From the get-go, this seems problematic, and it doesn’t get any better when one considers the strained relationship between the two nations purported to be partnering in this new initiative. On the heels of Russia’s accusations over Stuxnet, a Stuxnet-like attack occurred for the first time on U.S. soil when a water treatment plant in Illinois was attacked in November, an attack that, curiously, originated in Russia. As Reuters points out, there’s no love lost between the two nations, and in October a U.S. Intelligence report to congress revealed that Russia’s Intelligence services are:

“conducting a range of activities to collect economic information and technology from U.S. targets.”

Ouch. Sounds like this is going to be one of those Christmases where the in-laws end up tearing down the tree, setting the family dog on fire, and where the neighbors end up calling-in a domestic dispute. Here’s hoping the U.S. included a gift receipt with those matryoshka dolls.

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Russia and U.S. Celebrate an Early Festive Season

Activity – up; average phishing uptime – down

For starters, the group has discovered that there’s been an increase in global phishing attacks, from 42,674 in the second half of 2010 to 112,472 in the first half of 2011. To anyone following the trends in phishing activity, this isn’t earth-shattering news, but interestingly enough, even though overall activity is on the rise, the average uptime of phishing attacks has dropped significantly. In the first half of 2011, the average uptime of a phishing attack was 54 hours and 37 minutes, compared to an average uptime of 73 hours in the second half of 2010.

“The “uptimes” or “live” times of phishing attacks,” the report states, “are a vital measure of how damaging phishing attacks are, and are a measure of the success of mitigation efforts. The longer a phishing attack remains active, the more money the victims and target institutions lose.”

The report notes that the first 48 hours of a phishing attack are the most critical, as they represent the most lucrative time for the scammers, so quick takedown is an essential component of anti-phishing efforts.

More than a third of attacks involved shared servers

APWG’s report cites the increased use by phishers of shared virtual servers as a primary reason for this.

“Nearly every year we see a new tactic being used by phishers that drastically affects our Statistics,” APWG says, but this year the group has seen “a dramatic rise in what is actually an old tactic, but one that has been obscure until recently.”

As stated, the hacking of servers that host a large number of domains isn’t a new tactic, but the technique employed by the hackers is interesting, to say the least. According to APWG’s findings, the phishers, upon hacking the server, are placing a single copy of their phishing content on the server and then updating the server configuration to include that content in all the domains hosted by the server – effectively, every site on the server now has an infected section that can be accessed via a specific subdirectory.

To wit, the report states, “instead of hacking sites one at a time, the phisher can infect dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of web sites at a time, depending on the server.” The numbers are a tad staggering, according to APWG, which “identified 42,448 unique attacks that utilized this tactic, each using a different domain name. This was 37% of all phishing attacks worldwide.”

Phishers, apparently, have a hankering for Chinese

Perhaps most interesting in the new report is the massive increase in targeted activity by Chinese at Chinese.

“Attacks perpetrated largely by Chinese criminals,” APWG reports, “victimize Chinese Internet users and steal their credentials for Chinese e-commerce and banking sites.”

Attacks increased by 44% over the first half of 2011 and a mind-blowing 70% of malicious domain registrations worldwide were specifically targeted at Chinese institutions in the past six months. While APWG is identifying the source of these phishing attempts as being from China and directed at China, interestingly enough the Chinese phishers are using “free and low-priced” domain providers outside of China.

For whatever reason, the Chinese phishers have chosen to bypass the hacked domain route.

“Unlike most phishers, Chinese phishers do not use many hacked domains. Instead, they continue to register domains, on which they set up their phishing pages. Of the 11,192 domains used in 1H2011, at least 10,179 of them (91%) were maliciously registered, up from 5,895 in 2H2010.”

Interesting stuff this, and well worth the read. There’s more in the report to keep your head spinning, so head on over to APWG’s site and check out the downloadable PDF.

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APWG: Massive Surge in Phishing Targets Chinese Sites

Whether it arrives in the form of a junk email advertising for prescription drugs or a shared post in Google+, spam is one of the most annoying and costly things we have to deal with every time we log onto our computers.

However spam can be kept under control. By understanding some of the fundamentals about how spam, and spammers, work you can reduce the amount of junk you receive to a minimum.

1. Spammers are in this business to make money.

Most spammers will try to legitimize their emails by including the disclaimer stating you can be removed from future mailings by replying to the message with a specific subject line or message content.

Understand that if they obtained your email illegally or illicitly then politely asking them to remove you from their list isn’t going to stop them. It is simply telling them that the email address they have is one that is actively monitored by you. This means more spam.

Spammers are also creative in how they deliver spam. They understand that once a market dries up, they have to move on to something more lucrative.

Take email for example; for a long time, email was the preferred delivery method of spam. Once spam filters became more effective, the spammers moved on to comment spam. Akismet and other tools have worked to fight spam on comment enabled websites so the spammers turned their attention towards social networks like Facebook and Google+.

2. Spammers are good at social engineering.

The reason spam is so successful is that spammers know exactly what to say, or promote, to make people fall for their schemes.

Take the Nigerian 419 scams. Those actually worked. People fell for those scams because the spammers knew to tap into the driving force of greed. The mass advertisements for Viagra also make spammers a nice chunk of change. Why, because men are too embarrassed to go to their doctor or pharmacy to get this drug. If they order it online from an advertisement promising discreet ordering and delivery then the embarrassment factor is removed.

These skills have followed them to the social networking world as well. Spammers know that the more followers or friends a person has, the more popular, important or relevant they appear to others. They simply weasel their way into as many social circles as they can.

3. Spam is not going anywhere.

There are always reports that the amount of spam is reducing or that we are winning the war on spam. This is simply not true. In fact one company that recently claimed spam was down has just turned around to state that the number of spam messages has increased.

The truth is, spam is a see-saw battle because the battlefield changes so often. For a while email spam might be down but social network spam up. Then comment spam takes over until people catch on and concentrate their efforts on fighting it there. Spammers might move to SMS spam at that point. But as long as money can be made, spam will continue.

4. Spam is cheap to produce.

The reason spam is so effective is that it is so cheap to send. Spammers rent huge networks of computers, or botnets, that flood email inboxes with spam for as little as 9 dollars an hour or 67 dollars for 24 hours according to a report from ZDNet.

Even as spam filters learn how to better identify mailings sent from botnets, humans in developing countries can be hired to send spam through various channels. Log into any number of freelance worker sites and see how many people are bidding on jobs that look eerily similar to spam.

For a couple of bucks a legion of foreign workers can be hired to post comments, send or retweet messages, post to a wall, etc. None of which is meant for real interaction or adding value. It simply exists as spam.

5. Spam costs money to fight.

The truth of the matter is, spam is costly. These messages cost money to filter, to store, to read, to delete, etc.

But if you go into the fight thinking that you can simply download a bit of free software and your problems will disappear then you may be adding to the problem because some of the things you get for free actually spreads the malware that builds bigger botnets.

To effectively fight spam you have to be diligent. Research the tools that fit your organization’s needs and make an educated decision based on what solution can provide you with adequate protection while also fitting into your budget.

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5 Things You Need to Know About Spam

With Christmas just around the corner, the FBI can’t be accused of waiting until the last minute to get their Christmas shopping done. This week, the U.S. law enforcement agency – in partnership with several U.S.-based and international agencies – gave users around the world an early present when it announced the culmination of a two year operation dubbed ‘Operation Ghost Click’, which netted the Feds six Estonian nationals and saw the Christmas tree lights yanked on the infamous DNSChanger malware scam.

It’s been a busy year for the law enforcement community and its ongoing war against Internet crime, which has experienced some success with the takedown of two major botnets in Rustock and Coreflood. But global law enforcement agencies have frantically been creating a shopping list of new targets for investigation, which undoubtedly include a carousel of security breaches, both in major corporations and government departments, the wafting scent of state-sponsored and industrial hacking, the persistent and growing threat of hacktivism, and a raft of other exotic security threats. All of the above are wreaking havoc on the connected world, so when law enforcement wins one for the little guys, we damn well want to give credit where credit is due. We even have to send out kudos for coming up with a sexy name for a two-year long operation that saw six dirtbags paraded away in handcuffs. ‘Operation Ghost Click.’ How cool is that?

Anyone familiar with malware should be all-too-familiar with the DNSChanger scam, a Trojan horse distributed through multiple means, particularly spam e-mails. When activated, DNSChanger modifies DNS settings so that legitimate URLs are redirected to malicious sites bent on stealing information and earning ad revenues for the scam artists. Since 2007, DNSChanger has infected over four million unsuspecting computers, both Mac- and Windows-based. A half million of those are estimated to have been infected in the U.S., and the total haul for DNSChanger is estimated at $14 million over the past four years – reason enough for the joint collaboration of the FBI, NASA, the Estonian Police and Border Patrol, and the National High Tech Crime Unit of the Dutch National Police Agency, to name a few of the involved partners.  The full list of parties responsible for the takedown can be found on the FBI’s official news release here.

DNSChanger and its Mac OSX variants – known as OSX.RSPlug.A, OSX/Puper, and OSX/Jahlav-C – prompted antivirus and antimalware developers to create tools to detect and remove its malevolent ass, but the malware continued to propagate, which is where Operation Ghost Click comes in. On November 8, two data centers – in New York and Chicago – were raided and more than a hundred command and control servers were taken offline. “To reduce the disruption to infected machines,” The Register reports, “the rogue DNS servers have been replaced with modified machines that are being operated for the next four months by the not-for-profit Internet Systems Consortium.”

Infected users should now be experiencing healthy DNS activity, even if the IP addresses of their systems have been compromised by DNSChanger. Users who wish to check if their systems have been compromised can use the FBI’s rogue DNS checker site. CNET also has some helpful information for Mac users who wish to manually check for DNSChanger infection.

Now for the fun part: simultaneous with the server shutdown, Estonian police took six individuals into custody.  According to The Register,

“Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said the scam was controlled by an Estonian company known as Rove Digital. Six Estonian nationals have been arrested by local authorities, and the federal prosecutors plan to seek the defendants’ extradition to the US. The defendants include Vladimir Tsastsin, 31; Timur Gerassimenko, 31; Dmitri Jegorov, 33; Valeri Aleksejev, 31; Konstantin Poltev, 28; and Anton Ivanov, 26. A seventh defendant, 31-year-old Russian national Andrey Taame, remains at large.”

Each defendant is charged with five counts of wire fraud and computer intrusion crimes, and Tsastisin faces an additional twenty-two counts of money laundering. If convicted, six of these geniuses are looking at 85 years. Tsastsin is looking at an additional ten years for each of the money laundering charges, which, if convicted on all counts, would make him 336 years old by the time he gets out – and they say that bad things don’t happen to bad people!

Some are calling it the biggest cyber-bust ever. Whether or not that’s true, it was still a pretty good day for the law enforcement and Internet security communities. Keep up the good work, and thanks for the early Christmas present!

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‘Operation Ghost Click’ Biggest Cyber-Bust Ever?

With the world about to end on Tuesday, you probably have more pressing matters on your agenda, like kissing your kids goodbye, donning your tinfoil hat, booking the first available space ark to Mars, and spending some last special moments with the one you love the most – the Internet – using that quality time to finish those Torrent downloads, grab some virtual games for the long trip, and search for a good recipe for soylent green. But just in case the Earth doesn’t get into a smackdown with an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier and we’re not all converted into the cosmic equivalent of a badly shipped box of corn flakes, you may want to take note of the latest SSL Certificate security breach. And when you hear how long the purported malware has been infecting their servers, you may be tempted to dust off your old typewriter and dig your fax machine out of the rummage pile in the basement.

The encryption method that provides nearly every secure online transaction today is reliant upon third parties – the Certificate Authorities – to ensure that every connection is digitally signed as a reliable source; so what if those certificates are compromised? Well, for starters, we may be taking on some new computer overhead in the form of botnets or spyware. But that’s just speculation, right? CAs offer secure digital transactions and we can all sleep at night, right?

[Sigh]. The hits just keep on coming in a year that has seen massive security breaches and data breaches, the unprecedented rise of hacktivism, the hacking of SSL/TLS, deadly new botnets and smarter spammers. Amidst all these high-profile stories, it may be tempting to turn a blind eye from a number of security breaches at SSL Certificate Authorities in 2011, and in case you were wondering, there have been a few. In fact, more than a half dozen CAs have been breached this year, including four different Comodo resellers, DigiNotar, StartSSL, and the ubiquitous GlobalSign. Now, the fine people over at The Register are reporting that KPN Corporate Market, based in the Netherlands, has ceased issuing any new Secure Sockets Layer certificates after it discovered attack tools stored on its servers.

The tools in question were Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack mechanisms and while that may seem like serious business to most of us, KPN wants to assure us that it probably isn’t anything to worry about.

“There is no evidence,” The Register states, “that the compromise affects KPN servers used to generate the certificates that Google, eBay, and millions of other services use to cryptographically prove their websites are authentic, rather than easily created imposters. But the possibility cannot be completely excluded” KPN officials said in a statement issued Friday (Google translation here).

Okay, it most likely isn’t anything. Well, it could be something, but how can anyone possibly know? I mean, it’s not like the malicious software has been sitting there on the certificate servers, for like, oh, I don’t know, four years or anything. Right?

KPN states that they were taking action while they continue to investigate the breach, “which may have taken place as long as four years ago.”

C’MON, MAN! Four years? Are you freaking kidding me? To put that into perspective, that’s one-fifth of the lifetime of the World Wide Web. CA’s are supposed to be the front line of defense against botnets, spyware, adware, and a host of other security risks. I don’t know if it’s even possible (I’m sure it is) to estimate just how many certificates have been assigned in four years, but when you consider the aforementioned breaches of other CAs – all this year – it makes one wonder if we’ve been treading water in the River Styx all these years. “The compromise underscores the fragility of an SSL system that’s only as trustworthy as its most insecure, or most corrupt, member,” notes The Register. Around since 1994, there is plenty of speculation today to suggest that SSL is truly broken.

The Register points out that there are more than 600 CAs trusted by today’s mainstream browsers and all that’s needed to forge a replica of a credential for [insert website here] is unauthorized access to one CA. From an anti-spam perspective, it’s bad enough that we have to worry about the websites that represent a clear and present danger. What happens when we can’t trust any sites?

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Latest SSL Certificate Breach Sparks Renewed Interest in Phone Booths, Typewriters and Fax Machines

That’s right, we are talking about CAPTCHA.

CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, is a simple challenge-response test given to make sure that whoever is filling out an online form is actually a human being, not a bot trolling the Internet for victims. Those bots are usually looking for email or contact forms that they can spam, or trying to register for services that they can use to send spam.

So despite the fact that many humans had trouble reading CAPTCHA phrases and entering them correctly, we put up with these little tests because it helped fight spam.

Little did we know that CAPTCHAs can easily be thwarted.

Past Problems with CAPTCHA

Most people have encountered that one site with a CAPTCHA code so illegible that they try time and time again to enter it only to be met with: “Incorrect code, please try again.”

After too many unsuccessful attempts, people grow frustrated to the point that many web designers nowadays don’t recommend using CAPTCHA as a method for preventing spam. One designer used the analogy:

“Using a CAPTCHA code on most sites is like using a Humvee to crack an egg”

to show how overly aggressive this technique can be.

In addition to user frustrations, these codes haven’t always been the solution to problems with spam.

In 2008 Google found that bots were being used to create thousands of fake Gmail accounts despite their practice of using CAPTCHA to block fake, computer generated registrations. Microsoft also found their Live Mail service was being targeted by bots which were also creating fake accounts.

Both of these instances proved that CAPTCHA had been broken. And like any responsible security service, the folks who developed CAPTCHA went to work on fixing the holes that were used to bypass their security measures.

But that only lasted so long as well. In addition to fighting scammers who use technology to exploit the vulnerabilities in CAPTCHA there is also the problem of outsourcing.

Spammers who don’t want to fight the system via superior technology have simply taken to paying people in China, India, Bangladesh and other developing countries to register by hand. These people sift through the jumbled text diligently typing each character into the box and hitting submit all for a whopping 80 cents per 1000 boxes deciphered. Some pay as high as $1.20 per 1000 and jobs like this are plentiful on the many freelancer sites out there.

New Vulnerabilities Found

Luckily, a good number of vulnerabilities are found by researchers whose intentions are to make security products better. People with phenomenal programming skills and the ability to think outside the box spend hours researching ways they can defeat computer systems in order to make them more secure.

So when a research team out of Stanford University claimed that they have found a way to defeat a number of CAPTCHA systems with a program called Decaptcha, people had to take notice.

The team, consisting of Elie Bursztien, Matthieu Martin, and John Mitchell, created a five step process that removes all of the distortion and noise from the images so that the computer can more easily read the challenge so that it can provide the correct response. And the results are pretty interesting. Visa’s Authorize.net was beat 66% of the time, Blizzard Entertainment’s CAPTCHA system was bypassed 70% of the time, other sites like CNN, eBay and Wikipedia also saw high success rates.

The only ones that were not beat by Decaptcha were those used by Google and reCaptcha.

The Stanford team said they have no plans to release Decaptcha to the public, however their findings mean that it is only a matter of time before criminal organizations find new ways to circumvent CAPTCHA yet again without having to exploit armies of third-world employees to do their dirty work for them.

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CAPTCHA Cracked Again

Anti-spam watchdog The Spamhaus Project is back at it again, providing prime fodder for anyone who appreciates a good brawl. This time, the guardian of all things spam challenges a Dutch ISP to a measure-off, and it looks like the locker room is going to clear out for this one, folks.

Ah, Spamhaus. For anyone with a well-honed sense of humor and irony (and I’m one of them), your 2011 has been a year worthy of a Monty Python sketch, or at least a stint on The Office (the real one, not the spate of so-so spinoffs). If you haven’t been keeping up with the venerable Spamhaus Project, here’s what’s happened so far: a not-for-profit venture based in the U.K. and founded by Steve Linford in 1998, The Spamhaus Project is responsible for identifying and blacklisting spammers, a noble venture to say the least. They made news earlier this year when a five-year long battle with the now defunct e360 Insights, LLC came to an unceremonious if not hilarious close. e360, which filed suit against Spamhaus back in 2006 for defamation to the tune of $130 million, was awarded three U.S. dollars. And they say that bad things don’t happen to bad people (in case that’s unclear, the bad people are e360).

Not Safe for Work?

Not to be outdone, however, Spamhaus has followed up with what appears to be a pending measure-off in the locker room. In a virtual sense, parents, you may want to usher your children out of the room for this one. Spamhaus routinely provides anti-spam DNS blocklists, or DNSBLs, which are widely used by ISPs – almost three-quarters of the Internet, according to Spamhaus – to reduce the amount of spam channeled through their email systems.

What’s in a Name?

Recently, the organization put in for a request to block all the traffic of a German ISP called Cyberbunker, more infamously known as CB3ROB. If you haven’t heard about CB3ROB, here’s a little taste. The ISP is best known for providing services for The Pirate Bay, which has been making news of its own recently.

CB3ROB, by Spamhaus’ accounting, “has long [been] seen involved in hosting cybercrime and spam outfits”. In fact, states Spamhaus, “If the name sounds familiar, it is: CB3ROB A/K/A ‘CyberBunker’ has a long history of run-ins with the law. It was also a host of the infamous “Russian Business Network” cyber-crime gang broken up by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.”

Spamhaus also notes that their SBL (Spamhaus Block List) listings of CB3ROB have been:

“mounting steadily during 2011 for hosting malware, phishing and websites selling fraudulent goods advertised via spam.”

All in all, the type of pond scum we all know and despise, so no worries, right? Block away, Spamhaus!

But Wait…There’s More!

While there’s nothing unusual about Spamhaus’ treatment of CB3ROB, the real fun begins when a new player enters the arena – in this instance, a small Dutch ISP, A2B Internet. How are they involved, you ask? Well, simply put, cyberscum CB3ROB actually has a few server racks with one of A2B’s partners. Recognizing this, Spamhaus made several attempts to notify A2B, but apparently received no response. According to The Register:

“A2B, as an upstream provider, refused to block the full IP range of Cyberbunker and decided to block only one particular IP address that Spamhaus had identified as a source of spam.”

Not one to be shunned or ignored, Spamhaus decided to include the full range of A2B’s IP addresses in its block list. Not surprisingly, A2B was none too pleased about it, particularly when several of its clients’ services went dark. In fact, according to The Register, A2B Managing Director Erik Bais reported that some of A2B’s clients, “were practically offline as a result and couldn’t send or receive email.”

What’s a Poor ISP to do? Why, Call the Cops, of Course

Desperate, perhaps, A2B responded by filing a complaint with Dutch police, claiming that they were being “blackmailed,” according to The Register. In fact, if your curiosity hasn’t already gotten the best of you, you can go ahead and read Spamhaus’ humorous accounting of the incident, where Spamhaus reports that A2B also accused Spamhaus of “extortion” and “carrying out a ‘DoS attack’ on [A2B’s] network.”

So? Whose is Bigger?

This one’s just beginning, folks, so for now we’ll let you ponder the issues purported by both sides. Please chime in. Has Spamhaus overstepped its boundaries? Is A2B correct in its claims, or is it just clutching at straws? Or is this just another lame episode of “When Male Egos Attack?”

Weigh in and lay your bets before the real measure-off begins.

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Spamhaus to Dutch ISP: Show Me Yours and I’ll Show You Mine

In a shocking development for anyone still living in 2009, this week the U.S. Government has decided to tackle botnets head-on. Some have speculated that a high-up mucky-muck over at DHS thought it would be ‘a pretty neat thing to do,’ considering the timing (Hugh Jackman’s Rocky reboot robot revival Real Steel also hit theatres this week). While government spokespeople deny rumors that Optimus Prime is involved in this radical move, most ISPs are groaning, rolling their eyes, and wondering where they put their contact information for Megatron.

Sigh. In a world of the mundane, the lamest is the King of nothing special. Once again this week, the U.S. Government proved that axiom and their incessant ability to underwhelm when it comes to the ever-heated battle of the botnets. Multiple reports have cited the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), and others as generating a wormhole in space-time this week and stepping back into 2009, when and where they encouraged ISPs to adopt a code of conduct for preventing, detecting, and dealing with botnet activity.

Okay, the wormhole may be a stretch, but perhaps you now understand the tone of this article. This baffling move on the part of the government is strange, uncomfortable and highly inappropriate, for several reasons. First, it’s not and never should be the role of government to ‘gently suggest’ (i.e., threaten to legislate) best practices in a business and technology they know nothing about. Let’s face it: the U.S. Government has problems of its own without pointing out to someone else that their fly  is open. If you doubt me, look here, here, and here.

Second – and not to sound like a conspiracy theorist – but any time there’s a threat of the government sticking its fingers into people’s personal information, one cannot help but feel uncomfortable. In a request for information on the Federal Register on a voluntary ‘Code of Conduct,’ DHS said that one possible suggestion was to “encourage ISPs to send consumer support queries to a centralized consumer resource center that could be supported by a wide number of players. Such a resource center could reduce the burden on corporate customer support centers by pooling resources.” If you’re anything like me, reading that passage is probably giving you an irritating twitch in your right eye just now.

Finally, and most importantly, if one is to take a leadership role, one actually must…uhm, how can I put this delicately? Lead. There it is. The fact is, what the U.S. Government is trying to do seems like a severe act of self-deprecation, if the purpose of the meeting this week was to point out to the world that they weren’t aware that the ISPs have been doing just fine, thank you very much, in dealing with botnets over the past few years. Writes Kelly Jackson Higgins on Dark Reading: “ISPs such as Comcast, which two years ago was one of the first to employ a bot-notification service, notify customers whose machines they spot as bot-infected. Comcast’s free Constant Guard Security program directs the infected user to the antivirus center, where he follows directions to remove the bot malware.”

Fortunately, I’m not the only one who sees it that way. In fact, there’s a long line of private sector organizations who are ready to tell the government to keep their greasy paws off of something they know nothing about: “The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG), which is made up of ISPs, email providers, and security vendors including AT&T, Cisco, McAfee, Facebook, and Verizon, sees the federal effort as unnecessary and redundant, and is balking at the idea of the government legislating how ISPs handle bot-infected customers.”

Boo-yah! No kidding. No one can blame the ISPs for getting antsy when government suggests a central repository (it incites thoughts of a suppository. Just saying.) for information on their clients – us – and I can’t see this one going too far, based on early reactions from the non-government players.

So where does that leave us? Well, we can’t dismiss some of the information that came out of this event. According to press release from NIST, there are an estimated 4 million new botnet infections each month. The White House’s Cybersecurity coordinator pointed out in his keynote address that fighting these infections “requires a combination of efforts in which everyone has a role to play.”

Great, now get out of the way and let the ISPs do what they do best.

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U.S. Gov’t Time Travels to 2009 to Fight Botnets; No One Cheers

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “D’Oh!” Just when you thought you had things figured out, a new report from IBM states that desktop computers will become the craze and everyone will want one, that everyone in the world will be able to send messages over this new thing called “the Internets”, and that a new pop star named Lady Gaga will take the world by storm. Oh yeah, they also advise us that mobile spam is on the rise. In other words, they’ve stated the blatantly obvious.

Haters of spam and phishing, beware. We’ve got some bad news for you. Really bad news. You’d better be seated for this one. We’ll wait.

[waits]

OK, good. Now that you’re seated, we have some earth-shattering news that will rock you to your socks: mobile spam is on the rise. Now that we’ve said it, we’ll wait while you catch your breath.

[waits]

Better now? Good, because it came as a shock to us, too. ComputerWeekly.com reported this week that IBM has just released its X-Force 2011 Trend and Risk Report, and the news is, well, just as we expected. Now that our sarcasm is expended, let’s take a look at the facts, for IBM does, in fact, put together a pretty sweet report, replete with fancy graphics and yes, some pretty interesting reading.

BYOB or BYOD?

Personally, I prefer BYOB, but IBM’s report focuses on the growing trend of BYOD, or bring your own device. A nifty if not so advantageous upgrade to the bring your parent to school days, BYOD, simply put, is a natural occurrence in a world that’s fascinated by mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets. The offshoot of people bringing their devices to work, of course, is that they want to connect those devices to the company network, and that’s where the problem lies. According to IBM’s report, as stated by ComputerWorld.com:

“Mobile vulnerabilities are expected to grow at least 15% year-on-year, while mobile exploits are predicted to double compared with 2010.”

IBM’s report, it seems, is bringing to bear our greatest fears.

“’For years, observers have been wondering when malware would become a real problem for the latest generation of mobile devices. It appears that the wait is over,’ said Tom Cross, manager of threat intelligence and strategy for IBM X-Force.”

IBM is advising IT departments everywhere to increase their vigilance (and maintain their software) by ensuring that anti-malware software and patches are kept up-to-date. Malware being delivered through SMS and the privacy risks that arise from personal devices that may not be secure are, of course, primary concerns for any network that might be compromised through a wireless connection with the infected devices.

Not So Anonymous Anymore

The report has identified a tripling in the amount of malicious activity between 2010 and 2011.

The reason for this massive increase is due in no small part, “to ‘hacktivist’ groups, such as LulzSec and Anonymous, using SQL injection attacks, and ‘whaling’ or spear-phishing, whereby company senior executives with access to critical data are targeted. Anonymous proxies have more than quadrupled compared with three years ago.”

It’s Not all Bad

Even though malware is on the rise, it’s worth noting that the X-Force report found that web application vulnerabilities have decreased for the first time in five years. This can probably be attributed to the rise in more personalized and targeted attacks.

ComputerWeekly.com notes that IBM found “levels of vulnerabilities in web browsers and spam had also declined significantly while traditional attacks on weak passwords and databases were still commonplace.”

I Thought it Was the Year of the Rabbit

IBM’s preamble to their analysis is a little chilling in what it predicts, and it should stand as a dire warning to anyone with a vested interest in maintaining security.

“An explosion of breaches has opened 2011 with continuing, near daily new reports, marking this year as ‘The Year of the Security Breach.’ These breaches have been notable not just for their frequency, but for the presumed operational competency of many of the victims.”

The environment is changing, they go on to state, and in that snippet of knowledge we can begin to understand what’s happening here.

If 2011 is the ‘Year of the Security Breach,’ then what, in God’s name, does 2012 have in store for us? If the victims, as IBM suggests, are atypical targets due to their high levels of ‘operational competency,’ then what’s next?

We’re not in Kansas, anymore, Toto.

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IBM Report: Mobile Spam on the Rise, Sun Sets in the West

Fans of the venerable Monty Python and the Holy Grail will undoubtedly remember the classic scene at the Bridge of Death, when the bridgekeeper confronts the knights of Camelot with three questions each. Brave Sir Galahad, of course, can’t get it straight when the old man asks him, “What is your favorite color?” Sir Galahad answers, “Blue…no! Yelloooooww!” and is surreptitiously tossed into the Chasm of Death. Funny stuff, right? Not so funny is the current state of phishing – similar to Sir Galahad, the IT industry can’t seem to get it right when it comes to the financial impact of phishing, and this week, we call them out for it.

We all know that somewhere, somehow, spam sucks-in someone for some serious shekels (bet you can’t guess that I’m a fan of alliteration). It’s been a sad fact of life in the modern era for as long as email has been around. As you read this, some poor, unsuspecting schmuck who doesn’t understand technology enough is about to click a link that represents the gateway to financial doom and destitution; and before you don your fluffy bunny (or, in my case, Spiderman) pajamas tonight, drink your glass of warm milk (or pop an Ambien) and tuck yourself into your feather (race car) bed, an inconceivable host of naïve web surfers will have somehow compromised their safety, all from the perceived safety of the walls of their own homes.

But is that host of patsies innumerable? Some might think so, but just how far off are the estimates of the untold wealth being bilked from honest citizens? How much money are the creeps who phish really getting away with?

I Don’t Get It, and I Don’t Care

An eye-opening article by Terry Zink uncovers some uncomfortable truths about the understanding that we have of this modern-day plague, and it brings to bear an accusatory finger which points squarely at the heart of the problem. It ain’t pretty, either, because the true criminal in the ongoing war is apathy. Zink points out that the huge black eye suffered this week by UBS is an example of how law enforcement excels at bringing down white collar criminals; but the other ‘white collar criminals’ – spammers and phishers – go largely unidentified and unprosecuted. Zink points out that “phishers and scammers get away with it because they can: nobody goes after them, and when they do it is extremely rare.”

I Can Tell You, but You Won’t Like It

He backs it up with some pretty compelling evidence, too. According to multiple, reliable sources, the financial impact of phishing scams looks like a shopping list made by someone with Multiple Personality Disorder:

• $3.2 billion in 2007 according to Gartner
• $137 million in 2004 according to TRUSTean
• $60 million in 2008 according to Microsoft
• $500 million in 2004 according to the Ponemon Institute
• Not even in the top 5 threats according to Paypal
• $100 million in losses according to the FBI
• $250 million per year over the past couple of years according to Consumer Reports
• $2.3 million per one million customers of banks according to Trusteer

As Zink points out, the disparity between these numbers is not only glaring, in fact it’s downright distressing. That no one really understands how big this problem is, is in fact the only takeaway from these numbers.

Get Your Act Together

Zink considers that no one has really conducted a good study of the financial impact of phishing scams, and while that may be true, there are also other considerations. Some people who get scammed never report it, perhaps because they’re too embarrassed to tell anyone. Corporations normally remain tight-lipped when they’ve been successfully scammed, because that kind of news breeds investor and consumer apprehension. But the malaise which threatens us every day from within the confines of our inboxes grows like a festering wound, and the only way to combat it is to find some sort of solidarity amongst those of us who wish to stamp out the insects.

In short, if we don’t want to be tossed into the Chasm of Death, then we had better get our act together and come up with a response that will ensure our safe passage. That’s why this week, I’m calling out those groups above, and others not listed in that group (beginning but not ending with law enforcement), who can’t seem to get their story straight and don’t seem motivated to understand what we’re up against. Fix the problem, or remain part of it.

Now, for an Ambien and a good night’s sleep in my race car.

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“Blue…No Yellow!” Make-Up-Your-Mind Edition