Latest news
Spam may overtake e-mail in 2003
This year has seen a marked increase in malicious spam, such as financial scams. The most well-known of these, the Nigerian scam, seems to make particular victims of Americans. A recent report by the U.K. National Criminal Intelligence Service stated that as many as five Americans per day have been seen waiting in London hotel lobbies to meet people connected with the scam. MessageLabs predicted Nigerian scam operations will gross more than $2 billion in 2003.
Another new wrinkle in malicious spam is the FriendGreeting applet, a legitimate-looking online greeting-card service that tricks users into downloading an applet that mass-mails the addresses in a user's Windows address book and invites recipients to go to a greeting-card site, where they're prompted to download the same applet. MessageLabs has intercepted 70,000 copies of that e-mail.
The company predicts that spam next year will not only scour address books for e-mail addresses but will also look through the user's Internet Explorer cache, as viruses now do.
[ Read more ]
Related items
- Article: WorldCom Announces their Anti-Spam Solution (9 December 2002)
- News: Report: Spam not a problem at work (9 December 2002)
- News: Mirapoint battles growth in spam (29 November 2002)
- News: FTC: where spam goes off to die (5 November 2002)
- News: New Outlook to give spammers the boot (1 November 2002)
- Article: Network Associates Fights Spam (30 October 2002)
- News: No easy money suing spammers (24 October 2002)
- News: Direct marketers endorse anti-spam laws (22 October 2002)
- News: Study finds spam worse in manufacturing sector (16 October 2002)
- News: Spam masquerades as admin alerts (16 October 2002)
- News: Spam fighter defeats junk email company (15 October 2002)
- News: Spam filtering techniques (1 October 2002)
- News: Spam and virus control? (23 September 2002)
- Article: Spam Wars - Rise of the Spam (16 May 2002)
- Article: Spam: The problems with junk e-mail (8 April 2002)
- Article: The six headed spam monster (1 April 2002)
Spotlight
IT security jobs: What's in demand and how to meet it
Posted on 15 May 2013. | Let's say you want a career in information security, where do you start? What credentials do you need? What are employers looking for? Read on to find some answers.
Is Microsoft is reading your Skype communications?
Posted on 15 May 2013. | The question of whether Skype allows U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies to access the communications exchanged by its users has still not been adequately answered by Microsoft.
Internet Explorer best at blocking malware
Posted on 14 May 2013. | While Chrome’s malware download protection improved significantly, Internet Explorer 10 continues to outperform the other browsers with a block rate of 99.96%.
Researcher refuses to help Saudi telco to spy on people
Posted on 14 May 2013. | You would think that a Saudi Arabian telecom firm interested in monitoring its users' mobile communications would not be asking a well-known pro-privacy researcher for help, but you would be wrong.
Malicious browser extensions are hijacking Facebook accounts
Posted on 13 May 2013. | Facebook users - especially those in Brazil - are being targeted with malicious browser extensions trying to hijack Facebook profiles, warns Microsoft.
By subscribing to our early morning news update, you will receive a daily digest of the latest security news published on Help Net Security.
With over 500 issues so far, reading our newsletter every Monday morning will keep you up-to-date with security risks out there.
 |
