Experts warn that criminals are using this summer’s big books and films as means to churn out spam and worms to victims. Spammers and cybercriminals are exploiting movie-goers with junk emails and viruses riding on the back of this summer’s blockbusters. While news of Harry Potter spoilers circulate the internet, spammers are also exploiting interest in the Simpsons Movie out next week. Spam is flooding recipients’ inboxes with offers of a $500 (Ĺ250) gift voucher to fill out a Simpson’s related online survey.
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The good news is that image spam continues to subside, now averaging 14.5% of all spam e-mails in June, down from 27% and 37% in the months of April and March respectively, Symantec reported Monday in its July monthly State of Spam report. At its peak in January, image spam accounted for more than half of all spam. The bad news is that this doesn’t mean that image spam is going away, as Symantec is seeing an increase in new spam techniques that reference spam images in different ways.
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Opportunistic spammers are increasingly posting additional threats, such as links to malware, within the body of their unsolicited email messages, according to new findings by internet security company Marshal. The practice, which Marshal has dubbed “piggyback spam”, was only prevalent in around two to three percent of spam until the last seven days, when it shot up to around 15 percent of total spam.
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Not long ago the scourge of the internet, email worms have declined sharply in 2007, a security company has revealed. According to UTM security vendor Fortinet, the incidence of mass-mailing worms has declined by 5 percent each month since the start of the year, putting the once-feared worm well below other types of attack in terms of volume.
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Spammers have switched their tactics with the latest “storm worm” run in hopes of getting more of the malicious messages delivered into company inboxes. The newest run, which began late last week, features messages that falsely inform recipients they have received a greeting card from a family member. Some other variants show the message to be coming from an admirer, classmate or colleague.
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WASHINGTON â A federal jury in Phoenix convicted two men today on all counts, including conspiracy, fraud, money laundering, and transportation of obscene materials, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher for the Criminal Division and Interim U.S. Attorney Dan Knauss of the District of Arizona announced today. The jury convicted, Jeffrey A. Kilbride, 41, of Venice, Calif., and James R. Schaffer, 41, of Paradise Valley, Ariz., on eight counts arising out of the international pornographic spamming business they organized and ran in 2004. The trial, which began on June 5, 2007, was the first to include charges under the Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act of 2003. The law created by the CAN-SPAM Act was designed to crack down on the transmission of pornography in commercial bulk unsolicited electronic mail messages.
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According to an email and Internet content security provider, stock âpump ân dumpâ spam has dropped significantly. Stock spam now represents 5% of all spam compared to 50% in February. âAt the beginning of the year, âpump ân dumpâ spam was very popular, peaking at 50 per cent of all spam in February,â said Bradley Anstis, Director of Product Management, Marshal.
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Although numerous security vendors have testified to a decrease in image spam in recent months, that hasn’t stopped spammers from tweaking their methodologies. In recent weeks, spammers have taken advantage of online photo-hosting services, such as Imageshack and Flickr, to host their images in a technique researchers at MX Logic said this week that they donât expect to last long.
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A federal judge in Seattle has denied bail to a man accused of sending millions of illegal “spam” e-mails. Robert Soloway is charged with violating the federal CAN-SPAM Act of 2004 by sending e-mail with fake headers, and with cheating businesses who hired him as a consultant by sending out spam under their names. At a hearing Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Warma argued that Soloway, if free, could use his technical expertise to intimidate witnesses via the Internet. She said investigators are unsure how much money he has.
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Federal prosecutors allege that “Spam King” Robert Soloway has sent tens of millions of e-mail messages since 2003 to advertise his company, which offered software to send out broadcast e-mails. For $495, customers could have an ad sent to 20 million e-mail addresses or receive software allowing them to send up to 80 million e-mails. A man accused of defrauding people through tens of millions of spam e-mail messages sent around the world was denied bail.
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