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

People just weren’t spending as much money in the malls and department stores.

However every single study of consumer spending did show that companies with a strong online presence had a significant boost in sales this past year, including the holiday shopping season. In fact during December alone, non-store sales rose 10.6 percent from the same time one year ago. Even automobile sales online boasted a 9.5 percent increase.

To make sure they can stay competitive in the online retail sector, businesses must strive to build, and at the same time maintain, a solid reputation on the Internet.

Of course it was only a matter of time before spammers realized this as an opportunity to take advantage of this trend to dupe business owners into downloading dangerous malware.

How the Scam Works

Businesses are sent an email branded with the Better Business Bureau logo that reads:

“Thank you for supporting your Better Business Bureau (BBB). Your BBB receives more than 6,500 requests for information every day and provides reliability reports to consumers 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week.

As a service to BBB Accredited Businesses, we try to ensure that the information we provide to potential customers is as accurate as possible. In order for us to provide the correct information to the public, we ask that you review the information that we have on file for your company.

We encourage you to use our ONLINE FORM to provide us with this updated information. The URL below will take you directly to this form on our website:

CLICK HERE to login to your BBB account

You may also complete the form on the reverse side of this letter and mail to PO Box 1000; DuPont, WA; 98327; or fax to (206)436-5496.

Please look carefully at your telephone and fax numbers on this sheet, and let us know any and all numbers used for your business (including 800, 900, rollover, and remote call forwarding). Our automated system is driven by telephone/fax numbers, so having accurate information is critical for consumers to find information about your business easily. In addition, many consumers may search our database using your e-mail and/or Web address, so please be sure to include this information as well. As a BBB accredited business, you receive a free hyperlink from your online reliability report to your company Web site if provided to us.

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to receiving this updated information.

Sincerely,

Accreditation Services”

Eager to keep their information and good standing current, business owners and managers who click the link are not taken to a legitimate site hosted by the BBB. Instead their computer downloads malware and their account credentials are compromised by the phisher.

Another version of the phishing scam informs the recipient of the email that a negative review of their company has been posted to the BBB site. To refute the claim, the recipient must click on the supplied URL and address the problem. Failure to do so would result in the complaint resulting in a bad report being filed.

The URL here also directs the victim to a malicious site and has the potential for account credentials being stolen.

Fighting Back

This newest scam is the third of its kind in the last three months targeted at business owners.

Businesses have been instructed, by the BBB, to contact them directly if they receive emails claiming that they have received a negative complaint or that their information is incorrect or incomplete.

The Better Business Bureau is also taking steps to fight the problem, enlisting the help of the FBI.

“Our national organization in Arlington, Va. has been working for three months with the FBI, and I can tell you that they’ve closed down over 50 sites”, Katie Carrol, Director of Media Relations and Communications with the BBB, said.

They have also asked for business owners to help them fight this growing problem by contacting them at phishing@council.bbb.org if they received these emails, or any others like them.

IT departments should also be aware of this scam and take necessary precautions.

In house steps that can help prevent problems related to this latest attack, as well as others, include:

• Keeping anti-malware software up-to-date.
• Make sure anti-spam solutions are configured correctly and up-to-date.
• Make sure that employees are aware of this scam.
• Put procedures in place for employees who receive this email, or other spam messages, to report it.
• Teach employees how to better recognize spam and phishing attempts.

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Phishing Scam Targets Victims Using Better Business Bureau

The first one is a new incarnation of an old scam. Emails that look like they’ve come from your friends arrive with an urgent message about them being on a trip to a far flung place such as Madagascar, London, or Berlin and needing help. You see, they were mugged/assaulted and all of their money and documents were stolen, and they really need to go home but there’s the matter of their hotel bill. The messages generally ask for about $1600 to be sent via Western Union. Of course it’s just a variation of a 419 scam. If you get one, no matter how convincing it sounds, try contacting your friend first. In 99.9% of cases you’ll find they are safe and sound at home.

Next is the Better Business Bureau, who has joined the ranks of the brandjacked as new spam messages claiming to be from them are making the rounds. The messages tell the recipient that a complaint has been filed against them and urges them to click the included link to read it and respond. Anyone who does so is taken to a malicious site that attempts to infect their computer with the infamous Zeus Trojan. Zeus, distributes by a botnet with the same name, installs a keylogger and several other nasty bits on to the infected system and steals banking info and other sensitive data.

Finally, popular companies such as Facebook, American Airlines, Paypal, and several major banks are also being brandjacked by scammers. In some cases the phishing messages are receipts for fake purchases or reservations and in others, fake message or fraud notifications. In almost all cases, the attachments and links in the messages deliver malware. It looks like the spammers are hard at work building up their botnets!

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Several New Phishing Campaigns Going Strong

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

A new study reveals that spam email volume has plummeted to levels not seen since 2008. Spam now accounts for 70% of global email volume, down from a high of 90% and very close to the levels seen after the shady ISP McColo was shut down three years ago. The drop in the levels is attributed to the fact that spammers have moved to more targeted attacks for their spam, malware, and phishing attacks, rather than the massive blasts to random addresses they have traditionally favored. Spam filters are also becoming more and more effective and users more educated.

I think social networking has also contributed to the drop. People just don’t rely on email quite like they used to. Instead they hop on Facebook or Twitter and send a message. Spammers will always go where the biggest audiences are and that means the social networks. Not only do sites like Facebook offer enormous traffic, they also offer something else spammers covet-trust. A spam link on Facebook or Twitter is much more likely to be clicked since it will look like it was posted by a friend and people naturally trust their friends. It’s this built in trust that makes spam so rampant on these sites. It’s hard for people to break the habit of clicking on their friend’s links.

Another feature that spammers love is Facebook’s refusal to vet third party apps. Unlike Apple’s App Store, which has a strict approval process, developers must navigate in order to have their apps made available for downloading, Facebook lets anyone post any app they want. This means rogue apps aplenty. They will respond to user reports and shut down such apps, but it would be better if Facebook had a system in place to prevent them from being posted in the first place.

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Spam Levels Plummet to 2008 Levels

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

Recently researchers have detected a variety of new spam campaigns coming from Cutwail. Among them are phishing attacks disguised as fake Facebook friend requests (if the user clicks on the embedded link to accept the request, they are brought to a fake Facebook login page and their details stolen), and malware laden ACH transfer cancellations and order confirmations for airline ticket reservations. These attacks are meant to alarm recipients and/or peak their curiosity and click on the provided links, which lead to malicious websites that attempt to download Trojans that add the victim’s computer to the botnet.

Currently the sites the malicious spam messages point to are hosting SpyEye, a dangerous type of malware designed to steal login credentials and other personal information such as banking info and launch transactions with that info. Bobax is a Trojan that sends information about the computers it infects to its command and control servers, scans the computer’s data for email addresses to harvest, and uses the infected system to pump out spam.

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Cutwail Botnet Still Going Strong

Stuxnet, arguably the most interesting and bone chilling discovery in the history of computer security threats, is back in the news this week. This time, however, it’s brought a friend – one familiar to security experts and IT personnel alike. If the report from one of the world’s foremost experts is accurate, then it’s going to be a merry Christmas indeed for conspiracy theorists and lovers of international intrigue – and potentially a headache for a couple of governments which are being pressed to fess up about the true origins of Stuxnet and Conficker.

When its presence became known in June 2010, the mere existence of the Stuxnet worm sent shudders through international cybersecurity circles. In case you were off-world at the time of the incident, here’s the skinny: Stuxnet is spread via Microsoft Windows and targets Siemens industrial software and equipment. Although it’s not the first time hackers have targeted industrial systems, it is the first malware to spy on and compromise industrial equipment, and the first to include a programmable logic controller (PLC) rootkit.

What made Stuxnet particularly interesting to conspiracy theorists was where, specifically, it landed. 60% of occurrences of Stuxnet infections were in Iran, and five variants of the worm were discovered at various Iranian facilities, with the apparent target being Iran’s nuclear programme. Stuxnet’s ability to control Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems – the kind found in industrial plants – has wreaked havoc on the Iranian nuke programme, particularly at the country’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, where, according to Haarretz, “the centrifuge operational capacity has dropped over the past year by 30 percent.”

News of the industrial worm quickly became the stuff of a Tom Clancy novel or Hollywood thriller. Stuxnet’s sheer sophistication and the level of resources required to enact such an attack made it clear that Stuxnet was most likely state-sponsored. Accusations flew about the originator of the worm, and in a fine example of inductive reasoning, fingers were squarely pointed at the U.S. and Israel.

Enter Conficker

Much ado has been made of Stuxnet, and as might have been expected, nothing’s been proven about the source of the worm; but in what is sure to be only the beginning of a heated new debate, this week several media outlets have reported that a

“a celebrated ‘uber-hacker’ with 18 years of service in Special Operations and intelligence,” has linked Stuxnet to Conficker. No, that wasn’t a typo.

John Bumgarner, a retired U.S. Army special-operations veteran, former intelligence officer, and current CTO of the not-for-profit U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, says he discovered the link between Stuxnet and Conficker only after,

“spending more than a year researching the attack on Iran and dissecting hundreds of samples of malicious code,” according to Reuters.

In case you’ve been off-world AND living under a rock, Conficker is one of the most devastating and pervasive worms, discovered in 2008 and infecting millions of computers in over 200 countries. The worm is traditionally thought to be the work of an organized crime gang in Eastern Europe, because, much like Stuxnet, Conficker is very sophisticated, probably required immense resources to create, and is extremely difficult to detect and destroy.

“Conficker was a door-kicker,” Reuters quoted Bumgarner. “It built out an elaborate smoke screen around the whole world to mask the real operation, which was to deliver Stuxnet.”

Let’s be clear: Bumgarner thinks he knows who is behind the two programs, but he’s not saying who, because the matter is “too sensitive to discuss.”

According to Reuters, “The White House and the FBI declined to comment,” and, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which oversees Israel’s intelligence agencies, also declined comment.”

Is it really possible that the botnet propagated by Conficker was all for the purpose of setting up a state-sponsored attack?

Huh?

Things get even stranger from here. In September, Techworld reported that for the first time the Russian government has officially blamed the U.S. and Israel for Stuxnet, calling it “the only proven case of actual cyber-warfare”. And wouldn’t you know it? In related story, a water plant in Illinois was hacked in mid-November, an attack that apparently originated from Russia, and like Stuxnet, targeted the plant’s SCADA system.  In the attack, the hackers gained control of the plant’s equipment and damaged it, the first such type of attack on U.S. soil.

Confused? You should be. If we’re to glean anything from these latest developments, let’s at least take away the following: that a) Conficker may have been the delivery mechanism for Stuxnet, and b) Jerry Bruckheimer’s probably finalizing scripts at this very moment.

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Conficker Linked to Stuxnet, Conspiracy Theory Activity Up 530%

Spammers have been taking advantage of a vulnerability in Yahoo! Messenger that allows them to take over user’s accounts and post spam as their status messages. The hole is found in the application’s file share API and allows them to send automatically executed malformed requests without the user knowing or doing a thing. It’s not clear if the security hole allows any other malicious actions to be performed as well.

Spammers find such spamming attractive for the same reason they love spamming Facebook and other social networking sites. When spam links come from people’s friends and contacts, that built in trust factor makes the click through rate skyrocket. Spammers trying to exploit affiliate programs and pay-per-click advertising programs like Adsense know this could mean a tidy profit.

These types of attacks are the most popular way to distribute malware, and similar vulnerabilities have been found in Adobe Acrobat, Java, Flash Player, and other browser plug-ins. These attacks are popular because they don’t require the victim to do much of anything, unlike traditional spam and malware distribution methods which require tricking them into installing a Trojan or virus onto their system.

Yahoo! has been notified of the vulnerability but has not yet responded or repaired it. If you use Yahoo! Messenger you can protect yourself by simply making sure your account is set to block anyone who is not on your contact list, something that you should do anyway. It won’t protect you from attacks by your current contacts, obviously, but hopefully if you see a spammy sounding status update you’ll ask your contact about it rather than click on the link it contains! If you use version 11.5, keep an eye on your tabs as they may be hiding attacks.

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Spammers Take Advantage of Yahoo! Messenger Security Hole

Regardless, you can learn quite a bit from stats; and the ones below are listed for just that purpose. Each one will teach you a little something about spam to keep your inbox as safe as possible.

1. The Rustock botnet comprised of up to 1.7 million computers.

Sure, Microsoft engineered the takedown of this botnet but think about this, there were close to two million computers infected with the software that turned them into zombies.

This means that traditional anti-malware isn’t providing the protection that people thought it does. To keep a computer or network as clean as possible there needs to be a comprehensive anti-malware solution that protects the desktop, mobile devices, servers, email and web sites.

2. 90% of spam is in English.

On the surface this may seem insignificant. But a year ago, 96% of all spam was written in English.

What this means for you is that spammers are coming from many different countries so anti-spam laws in places like the United States and Canada won’t be as much of a deterrent to these people.

3. One in 445 emails is a phishing email.

Phishing leads to financial, confidential, and personal information being stolen to the tune of over 2 billion dollars every years. Since the average professional receives more than 100 emails each day odds are you are coming into contact with some type of phishing attempt at least once a week, and possibly more.

4. One in 284 emails contains malware.

When people stopped falling for the Nigerian scams and the pharmaceutical email advertisements spammers had to look for other avenues in which to make money. Delivering malware via email is one. Think of how many times people fall for fake anti-virus pop-ups or have been infected with various Trojans that turn their computers into zombies that can be rented out with various botnets and you can see why many spammers turn towards these money making opportunities.

5. 91% of all spam emails contain a link.

If the spam you receive doesn’t contain a malicious program that doesn’t mean you are out of the woods just yet. The link you clicked on could be sending you to a malicious website that infects your computer just as easily. What’s worse is that most spam filtering solutions don’t actively block emails that contain links like they do when it comes to executable file attachments.

Users need to be aware that links can be just as dangerous as downloads when it comes to malware. Part of any user education training should include a section about malicious websites and the fact that spammers often send links to them via email.

6. Two thirds of all spam is related to the pharmaceutical industry.

Spammers don’t waste their time sending out advertisements for things they don’t make money on. So when you see so much effort being placed on the Internet pharmacy industry you know that someone is buying from these guys.

The problem isn’t just that these email messages are tying up your inbox, but that people are actually buying medicines that are often unregulated or even counterfeit.

What people should take away from this is the fact that spammers tend to stick with what works for them. When the money dries up from Pharma spam, they will turn to something else.

The thing about statistics is that they can be tweaked to provide facts for whatever it is you are trying to prove. In fact, some statistics show that spam is actually at an all time low. What they don’t tell you is that email spam is at an all time low because spammers have simply taken different approaches to how they send junk emails to their victims.

No matter what the statistics say about spam, the problem still exists and it still costs businesses and individuals time and money.

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6 Spam Stats You Can Learn From

Security researchers are warning those with Android phones and tablets, especially SMEs, to make sure they are properly locked down and protected. Studies have shown that Android-based spam and malware detections have risen nearly 500% since April. While the total volume is still quite low compared to PC-based spam and attacks, there is still a need to be concerned. The majority of the detected malware is comprised of Trojan horses and spyware. Some of it subscribes the device to premium services like texts and ringtones without permission and some even record phone calls and sends them to a remote server. (This would be a new twist on the common phishing scam. Instead of tricking someone into typing in their personal info, just record them saying it in a phone conversation! Imagine if you had that kind of malware on your phone and then used your phone to say, make a hotel reservation or check your bank balance? The scammer would be able to record it all).

Why the sudden increase? The blame for that falls squarely on Google. Unlike Apple, which forces app developers to jump through hoops and go through a very slow review process to get their apps into the App Store, Google’s Android Market has a completely opposite approach. Anyone can get an app into the app store. Like Facebook, there is no real approval or vetting process in place. The result? At last check, over 400 apps in the Amazon Marketplace contain malware.

Spam succeeds due to the lack of spam filters built into the Android OS and because links in texts can easily be made to look legit. This leads to users being tricked into clicking on malicious links and accidently downloading malicious code.

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Android Spam Rises Sharply

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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