I’m Rich…

… OK, so there is a few flaw in the plan, namely that I need to reply to someone in Singapore who has discovered some dormant investment accounts and I can get 25% if I help them get at the money. All sounds too familiar? Yes, it is that old phishing scam that we know and love however the twist here is that the letter arrived to my home address - it’s the same words as you would find in the ‘traditional’ email variety, just printed out and put in an envelope.

I wonder how many people will fall for this version… none I hope… and in the mean time it will cost the scammers the price of printing and posting - with luck they will be out of business shortly.

 

June 2, 2008 | Filed Under Spam | 1 Comment 

1Server, 3 Weeks, 1.4GB Personal Information

A server was found this week chock full of personal information - 1.4GB of personal information. The information had been stolen from around the world and included health records and email - and within the email there was even more information relating to contacts, account details, pension savings plans (401k) and so on… 1.4GB can house a lot of useful information.

This server was quite a find… but it is not alone, we see compromised servers which receive stolen information everyday and there are a lot of them. OK, so most don’t have 1.4GB but they do contain tens of thousands of pieces of information. The latest Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR Vol. XIII, April 2008) reported more than 60,000 bot infected computers per day (a 17% increase over the previous 6 months). These aren’t all collecting information - most are sending it out (spam, phishing, DoS, …) however some of them are. It also highlighted that of the 54,609 applications installed, 65% were malicious.

So (and I’m starting to sound like a broken record)… if you value your information and something asks to install itself, especially if you are in a web browser (also known as a plug-in), be very sure that the source of the request is valid - if not, then just click away. 

May 9, 2008 | Filed Under Spam, data-loss, security | Leave a Comment 

Happy Birthday Spam

This month marks 30 years since the first spam email message was sent. Back then the system could only cope with just over 300 email addresses at a time. The recipients gave the sender a hard time - they all sort of knew each other anyway!

My how times have changed, more than 85% of email traffic today is spam, billions of messages are sent everyday. Back then it was a simple invite - where the sender wanted to see the recipients, today it is much darker with one purpose in mind, making money. The past decade has seen an enormous rise in Internet users, spam and education as to the dangers of spam - but it doesn’t seem to matter there are still people who open attachments or visit websites without second thought to the potential consequences.

Anti-spam appliances and services have also grown up in the last decade and can virtually eliminate spam from arriving in the enterprise… new internet services offer ‘clean’ email feeds where spam is removed before it get to the enterprise. Various consumer email providers also offer great anti-spam functionality… isn’t it time we all used something… or will we all still be complaining about spam 30 years from now?

May 2, 2008 | Filed Under Spam | Leave a Comment