This has prompted a majority of IT departments to employ some sort of anti-spam, or spam filtering, solution to assist in keeping the inboxes of their users as spam free as possible.

But notice that the word assist is used in that previous sentence.

This is because no spam filter is going to completely eliminate spam. There are some out there that will do a great job of drastically reducing the amount of junk email that is successfully delivered, but despite the anti-spam solution’s best efforts there are users in every organization that will find a way to attract spam like ants to a picnic.

To help reduce the number of pharmaceutical advertisements and promises of great riches that fill the inboxes of your co-workers, try these hints to help involve them in the fight against spam:

1. There is no one giving you a iPad for free.

When you click on those advertisements that proclaim you the lucky winner of an iPad, XBox, smart phone, etc. understand that they are just collecting your email address and other personal information to sell off to spammers.

Instruct your users to avoid clicking on any advertisements when they using computer resources at work to avoid falling for scams that collect their email addresses and to stay away from sites that may install malware on their computer.

2. Social games harvest more than virtual crops.

When a game boasts over 70 million players, people take notice. Some of those people are spammers.

Social games are fun ways to pass the time, and most are free to play. And while the makers of these games will often charge for level-ups or other premium services they also make money other ways. When you register, you provide your email address, your age, your income and a host of other information that can help advertisers (and spammers) better target you for mass mailings.

Users should understand that they should only play games on sites that legitimately protect their personal information and that their work email should never be used to register on any site. Also, they can cut down on spam and advertisements by reading the fine print when signing up and opting not to receive product information from the company or its partners.

3. Unsubscribing tells spammers you are alive.

According to the CAN-SPAM Act, all email marketing must contain a way for recipients to remove their name from the mailing list. Spammers know this and use this for two things. First, it helps legitimatize them. People see this and think that it is merely an innocent advertisement. Secondly, it lets the spammer know that they have found an active email address instead of one that has long been abandoned.

Teach users how to block emails so that when they receive newsletters and advertisements that they don’t pay attention to, they can simply block them rather than opt-out.

Make it easy for users to help identify spammers. One organization I work with has an email address set up for users who receive spam or other suspicious mail. They simply forward the email message in question to that account and someone from the IT security team addresses the problem. Not only does this help feed the spam filter with more data to use, but it brings the users into the fight. They feel like they are helping to solve the problem.

Users can be one of the best weapons in fighting spam, if you make it easy enough for them to help. A simple email address where they can forward suspicious emails beats having them fill out a form or filing a formal report.

4. Never register for forums, websites, chats or newsletters using your work email address.

Many times, we sign up for things with our work address because it is something legitimately used for work. This can lead to users being comfortable with this process and eventually, they will post that address to a less than ethical site.

Make it a policy that company email addresses should not be used to register for anything other than with a trusted vendor, customer or partner.

5. Clean out your inbox regularly.

When forced to clear junk mail out of their inbox, most people will be more cognizant of how much spam is sent to them on a daily basis. When they find this process to be tedious, they will likely do a better job at managing their email address out in the wild.

Most companies have policies that address email inboxes, and just as many don’t really enforce these policies. Make sure that users know that this, or any other policy regarding email, will be enforced.

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5 Ways Your Users Can Help You Fight 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’

Spammers, always trying to stay one step ahead of the game, realize this. They know full well that businesses conduct trainings for their employees, IT departments spend thousands of dollars on spam filtering technologies and many of their intended victims have just grown wise to their methods over the course of time.

So, like any good criminal would, spammers have adapted.

Over the years they have ventured out into other avenues in which to launch their attacks using social media, text messaging services and even the content used by websites has become a method for spammers to advertise their products.

However now spammers have not only changed how they attack their victims, but they have changed the victims themselves.

More Spam Targeted At Children

Children have always been the indirect casualty of spam since the day they sign up for their first email account. Once that address is captured by a spammer’s list they will most assuredly start receiving ads for pharmaceuticals, financial help and even mail order brides.

But for quite some time their receipt of these messages was based on mere coincidence. Their email address was caught in the cross-fire.

Spammers didn’t target them directly because the messages sent to them were essentially worthless. Most 13 year olds weren’t looking to get out of debt or interested in meeting singles in their area (over the age of 18 that is).

But that has all started to change.

Spam itself has changed as well. Sure there are still enough email messages pleading for your assistance moving money out of a war torn nation, but for the most part this type of spam has slowed down. Taking its place are phishing scams and the delivery of malware. And both are much more dangerous than the Nigerian prince hoax.

Children Are Easier Targets

Children may be more adept at using technology than their parents, but they are still kids. And what is one thing that kids love to do on the computer? Play games.

Of course, this quickly became a breeding ground for spammers.

Spammers can easily target the email addresses of younger Internet surfers to advertise fun, arcade style web sites that specifically appeal to children. Clicking on the link provided in the spam email takes the eager-eyed kid directly to a site where they can choose from hundreds of online games to play.

By infecting the website with malware spammers have found that they can easily attract thousands of visitors who are far less skeptical and much more willing to click a link or download a file if it means that they can soon have access to a wealth of games to keep them occupied.

So bad is the problem that some security firms report that there are more than 60 arcade game sites that contain malicious software aimed at children. Some of these sites were designed specifically to serve malware and others are the unknowing victims of cybercriminals who have injected the malicious code into a perfectly legitimate web site.

Why Kids?

If kids don’t have the money to fork over to the spammers, then why have they become the targets of these attacks?

Because it gives the criminal easier access to their parents information and data.

Since most children share a computer with other family members, spammers have picked up on the fact that by tricking little Johnny or little Sally into downloading a keystroke logger through their site, they can have complete access to any information their parents may have there.

Taking it one step further, by requiring a credit card to access premium content or to purchase additional game features, scammers can easily capture thousands of freshly validated card numbers from parents who allow their children to make these purchases online.

Unfortunately, education doesn’t really work as well with kids as it does with adults. Adults quickly see the ramifications of spam and avoid it. Children, on the other hand, are much more impulsive thus, clicking on a link that promises fun outweighs the risks.

To fight this trend it is going to take vigilance on the part of parents to stay on top of their children’s Internet activities and the implementation of the right technologies to help keep kids off of sites that pose such a risk.

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Spammers Targeting Kids Through Gaming Sites

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

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)

Maybe they think it makes their blog look popular to have hundreds of comments, or perhaps they are too lazy to monitor and delete the obvious spam comments left on their site. The hope is the blogger simply doesn’t know how to solve the spam problem. If this is the case, education is an easy fix.

From the reader’s perspective, nothing is more irritating than coming across a site that is littered with off topic comments, links to designer handbags, pharmaceutical advertisements and the throngs of strategically misspelled words to make the comment look unique to the search engine.

But why do spammers waste their time with blog comments? For the same reason they send email spam, for advertising.

It may surprise many people, but the spam found in blog comments is not different from the same spam you find in your email inbox. Right down to the way that spam is sent.

The Benefits of Comment Spam

I had mentioned that comment spam is used for advertising purposes. Leaving a comment with a link to a spammer’s site on a popular blog is an easy way to get your site out in front of thousands of readers. By flooding the blogosphere, this could lead to hundreds of thousands of Internet surfers seeing a spammer’s “ad” every day.

Considering the fact that certain keywords are nearly impossible to rank well in Google due to extreme competition, gaining traffic from links that are embedded in blog comments is one of the few remaining methods of free Internet marketing.

Ironically, these links have an added benefit to the spammer’s pages that make up the spammer’s web site. The number of incoming links is one way that search engines determine a web page’s popularity. The more links a page has, the more popular it’s content looks to the search engine, which in turn can result in the page being indexed more quickly and the page ranking higher in the search engines.

It also helps increase the page’s coveted Page Rank. Obtaining a higher Page Rank is often one of the first things a Search Engine Optimization specialist tries to do to help their web sites rank well.

How Spammers Flood the Blogosphere

While the reason comment spam is so prevalent is not the only thing that is identical to email spam, the methodology is as well.

Much like the botnets that pump out millions of spam emails a day, comment spammers use software programs that pump out hundreds of comments a day arbitrarily and automatically.

That’s right, all of those senseless comments you see were all left by a software program, not an actual human being.

Now, 50 to 100 comments may not seem to be as much of a problem as that of email spam, but if you consider that by targeting high traffic blogs that receive 40,000 or more visits a day, those numbers add up to millions of people being affected by comment spam. Because remember, the victim of comment spam isn’t the blog itself; it’s the reader.

The Subtle Differences

Comment spam and email spam may be similar in parts, but the two do share some differences as well.

Email spammers try to send out as many messages as possible every minute in hopes that they find a someone somewhere along the lines.

Comment spammers take a different approach.

Of course, trying to blast their comments out to more blogs each day may spread their message to a wider net so why do they limit themselves to less than 100 blogs a day? Because they have learned over time that the search engines are smart enough to see how many back links (the links embedded into a comment, forum or anywhere else on a website) a site receives each day. If the site gets too many, then the search engine algorithm thinks something fishy is going on and may wind up penalizing the offending site.

The search engines also notice the content of the comments as well. When scanning the web, the search engine algorithm notices the content surrounding a link as well as the link itself. Especially the anchor text, which are the words that the link is inserted in. For example, many sites use click here as the anchor text. If certain keywords are used instead of click here, then the site looks more important.

However, if the same keywords and same content is used for too many back links the search engine algorithm again senses something is amiss and realizes that someone is spamming. To combat this, comment spam software will subtly change the content and keywords before automatically leaving the comments. These small changes are just enough to throw off the search engines and make the comment look unique.

Bloggers who recognize comment spam and how it works will definitely have a leg up when it comes to keeping it off their site. Like email spam, it takes work to fight but in the end it is well worth the effort.

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Comparing Comment Spam to Email Spam

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

While it’s despicable for a spammer to take over anyone’s account, and I can understand why Paula Chase’s family is upset, the situation does raise some questions. Why didn’t they close her account when she died? Many of my friends have a list of their online accounts and passwords stored with their wills, and I think this is an excellent idea. Another question I have is why didn’t they simply block their mother’s email address? Rather than let the spammer “torment” them, blocking her address might have saved a lot of stress.

This story illustrates the importance of making sure your online accounts are taken care of if something happens to you.  For example, Facebook will turn your account in a memorial page -all your loved ones have to do is contact them and request it.

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Family Tormented By Spam From Dead Relative’s Account

False positives, as this scenario is referred to, can be a problem for both business and personal emails alike. Unfortunately, most people are under the impression that there is nothing they can do to prevent their emails from being falsely labeled as spam. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Spam filters often employ Bayesian filtering to determine if a message should be allowed to pass through to the recipient’s inbox, or if it should be cast aside as spam.

The way this filter works is by scoring the content for the entire message. By looking for certain flags in an email message and assigning each a value, the spam filter can ascertain if a message is spam by totaling up the score and measuring it against a pre-set threshold. Emails that score too high are discarded while those that are considered legitimate safely find their way.

Email etiquette

Most organizations address email etiquette in their email policies to help protect the company’s image. A poorly written email can be embarrassing to a company. It looks unprofessional and it can cost a company money in lost accounts and lost respect.

But emails written with etiquette in mind can also help keep them in good graces with the spam filters as well.

When emails are written the right way, they wind up looking less like spam. The following rules of email etiquette will show you just how taking the time to write your messages properly will help get them delivered.

1. Clean up the spelling and grammar

Poorly written English is one of the first things a spam filter looks for. Excessive spelling, grammar and wrongly used words are clues that the content is not legitimate. Take the time to run your messages through a checker before you send them. If your email client does not offer this, write important emails in a word processor so they can be checked prior to your sending them.

2. Don’t over use the cc: and bcc: fields

At times it is important to include other recipients on an email message, but the more people that you include the more your message looks like spam. Remember, spammers would lose money if they had to send email messages one at a time so they send them in large batches.

3. Include an email signature

Most spammers don’t use an email signature. You should because the spam filters have the ability to read whether or not a signature file is used .

4. Avoid abbreviations that are unnecessary

If you are sending an important email message then you shouldn’t use abbreviations like LMAO or LOL. First of all if you are conducting business you don’t want to look like a gossiping teenager. Second of all, these abbreviations look like gibberish used to fool the spam filters so what do they do? Count this against the total spam score.

5. Avoid all caps in the email and the subject

Some emails are more important than others. Parts of your email may be more important than others as well. But there are better ways to show this than by using all caps.

We all know that writing in all caps is rude, but it also makes your message look like spam.

6. Avoid colored text

Professional emails don’t need fancy dressings like fonts that look like handwriting, animated gifs and certainly they don’t need colorful text. While colors, especially red, are often used to call attention to certain parts of email message, or even to responses, they also call attention to the message itself in the eyes of the spam filter.

7. Use punctuation properly

It is hard to show emotion when writing an email message. To compensate, we often overuse certain punctuation marks and symbols. Most commonly, the exclamation mark !!!, the question mark ??? and the dollar sign $$$. Overuse of these are as bad as using all caps in the eyes of the spam filters.

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7 Ways Email Etiquette Helps Get Your Messages Delivered

1. Counterfeit Goods: Designer bags, watches, and other knock-offs are a favorite of spammers. They hope to lure shoppers in with hard to resist deals on sought after brand names such as Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and Prada. Some of these spams are honest and actually brag about being high quality “replicas” while others do all they can to convince buyers they are getting the real thing. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true – it is!

2. Fake Delivery Notifications: This malicious spam has been around for a while and to keep right on going. Since this is the time of year people tend to ship lots of packages to distant friends and family, it’s a sure bet spammers will try and take advantage of that to trick people into downloading Trojans that will add their computers to  botnets.

3. Pharmaceutical Spam: This old favorite is still going strong as well. Expect lots of cheesy subject lines with holiday themed innuendo designed to sell a variety of male enhancement products.

4. Fake Auction Notices: This phishing scam uses emails designed to look like they’ve come from eBay. Usually they say you’ve won an item or that a buyer is trying to get in touch with you. Naturally you’ll have no idea what they are talking about because you haven’t bought or sold anything  and want to check your account. Don’t follow the links in the message! They’ll lead to a fake eBay page and when you submit your login details, they’ll go straight to a scammer, who will likely use them to hijack your account and rip people off.

5. Fake Greeting Cards: Perhaps the most popular holiday spam of all are fake, virus ridden electronic greeting cards. A good rule of thumb is if the notification doesn’t tell you who it’s from, it’s probably fake. All the major e-card sites will tell you the name of the person who sent the card in the notification email.

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Top 5 Christmas Themed Spams

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

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

In this edition of Spamfoolery, we uncover the all-seeing eye of Sauron to take a sobering look at the state of intelligent thought in the spam world. Hold onto your boots. This one is not for the sense of humor challenged.

Each Sunday, I write my blog post, and while my mind’s always thinking about what I’ll be writing this coming week, I don’t really consciously come up with anything salient until Sunday morning itself rolls around. Sitting with my first cup of coffee, I browse the spam news and discover what nefarious new exploits the scumbags (spambags? I don’t know, it has a nice ring to it) are unleashing on the world; and in the course of that haphazard process, something shakes loose.

This week was no exception as the spam gods smiled upon me once again. This morning, I checked my email to discover that one of my former students sent me messages in Twitter. A nice fellow this former student, I instantly recognized the messages as Twitter intercepts…clearly, his Twitter account has been compromised and, wouldn’t you know it? As I’m writing these words, another message just came through. All the messages are the standard shenanigans one expects from spammers: “you too can be three inches taller,” “The most defiant fillies [sic] will strive for riding your new big Italian stallion” (seriously, that’s a real one. For more, look here), “I saw your wife naked with the village idiot last week, check pictures here,” “I know what you did last summer…” Okay, that last one may have come from a movie, but you get the point.

In the case of my former student, a clear tip-off – beside the apparent lunacy of his messages – was a common factor: a Russian URL at the end of each message. Now, I may be cozied up in the Great White North of Eastern Canada, but the northern climate is my only connection to Moscow. Well, maybe that and I like Borscht, but those are the only two similarities. Vodka too, but those are the only three similarities. Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, those funny dancing bears, Anna Kournikova…ah hell. Look, as the crow flies, Russia is 5,000 miles due east, okay?

So receiving these messages (you can see them above), I was forced to wonder, once again, just how stupid these spammers think I am – and by association, just how stupid they must be. Anyone following my blog knows exactly what I think of spammers, so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that I have an extremely low regard for these scum-of-the-earth, little-old-granny-scamming, make-my-inbox-flood-with-pure-crap-on-a-daily-basis, scam artists. Try saying that ten times fast.

All this ire forced me to consider, once again, whether spammers really are stupid, or whether they just act stupidly. Once again, I came up with a frustrating answer: it’s all of the above and everything in between. Yes, spammers are stupid and yes, they are wily, calculating and yes, even intelligent. Confused yet? Me too.

Look, it would be so much easier if we could simply write them off as being morons, and the bulk of the spam email sent each day would give any jury an easy way out when deliberating whether these guys are guilty of being just plain dumb. It would be so much easier going to bed each night knowing that we had nothing to fear from these jerks. Reality however, is a harsh mistress, and the simple fact is they’re not as dumb as we want them to be.

Spam IQ, Anyone?

With that in mind, I set out to categorize the spammers in the best possible way I could imagine: the Spam IQ test. Like the widely-criticized Intelligence Quotient, there’s no real science to it, but it is fun to consider. So, without further ado:

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Spamfoolery: Stupid is as Stupid Does Edition

Spam is ever present and, with the holidays approaching, expect it to rise as spammers seek to take advantage of holiday shoppers looking for bargains.  Here’s a look at the top spam headlines for October:

Spam Is Down, But Not Out

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/13/8304494-spam-messages-are-down-but-stay-vigilant?preview=true

Company Hopes Spam Lawsuit Sends a Message

http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail6371.cfm?Id=122259

Spammers Want Your Email

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394195,00.asp#fbid=RYYWV-oisZx

Blacklisted ISP Calls Police

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/13/dutch_isp_accuses_spamhaus/

Spammers Exploit Steve Jobs’ Death

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2011/10/11/spam-and-scams-emerge-in-wake-of-steve-jobs-death/

If you know of a story we missed or have something to say about one of the ones we mentioned, please leave a comment!

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October Spam Roundup

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 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