“We’re number one! We’re number one!” Well, on second thought, it’s not really anything to brag about or cheer about. Because the United States topped the list of spam-producing countries in a recent report from Sophos. One in every six spam emails is now being generated from America. This rather alarming figure shows that while cyberattacks are often launched from other countries, American computers are so infected that we provide the donkey work (from computer users who don’t even know they’ve been compromised by malware) for the world when it comes to actually generating spam. The ... more

TRACElabs is out with their mid-year report, and the news is worse than ever. Spam has hit a new level which surpasses the previous record set last July. In other words, the spammers have recovered fully from the McColo shutdown, and are bigger than ever. And, even more worrying, the spammers seem to be evolving to better avoid the threat of such shutdowns in the future. Highlights from their press release: “The previous highest period of spam activity was mid-2008,” said TRACElabs lead security researcher, Phil Hay. “During the third quarter of 2008, spam volumes declined ... more

There’s a reason spammers keep right on spamming — because every so often, it works. Since emails are free to send out by the millions, the more you send the more people you entrap. A new survey out shows that one in six people have at some time in their lives responded to spam. Now, this doesn’t mean that one in six people who get spam on a given day (or a specific spam message) will respond — the reply rate is much, much lower than that. But it does show that whatever the true rate ... more

Tagged.com, which bills itself as the “third-largest” social networking site in America, is being sued by the state of New York for “deceptive email marketing practices and invasion of privacy,” due to their practice of what amounts to chain-email. When an unsuspecting new user signed up for the site, Tagged would mine their address book and send out a message to everyone in it which told the recipients that their friend had posted photos on the site for them to view. No photos actually existed, and if anyone tried to view them, they were forced to sign up ... more

MessageLabs is reporting a recent spike in spam emails using tiny URLs (such as ones from the appropriately named site tinyurl.com). For the spammer, this can avoid an email filter and also hides the URL from the recipient of the spam. If you’re savvy enough to know not to click (for instance) on links ending in “.ru” a spam message with a tiny URL may not look as suspicious. That’s the idea, anyway. The spam emails themselves are short, looking more like a posting on Twitter than a full-fledged email. But in the story from PC ... more

Even before his death, Michael Jackson ranked number ten worldwide on the ignoble list of celebrity names used in spam attacks. While the new numbers aren’t in, he’s obviously going to shoot to the top spot, at least in the short term. I wrote about this last week, but wanted to provide an update, since I came across an article with a fair amount of detail (such as domain and file names used) on the current state of Michael Jackson spam out there. From Enterprise IT Planet, here’s the info: Malware writers, always eager to take advantage of breaking ... more

The new MessageLabs report is out from Symantec, and it should come as no surprise that spam continues to account for more than 90% of all email. Most of this, also no surprise, comes from botnets. Here are a few excerpts from the press report: Symantec Corp. today announced the publication of its June 2009 MessageLabs Intelligence Report. Analysis highlights that spam levels were unchanged since May at 90.4 percent largely due to the several hours of downtime experienced by Cutwail, one of the largest and most active botnets, following the shutdown of California-based ISP, Pricewert LLC (also known ... more

It’s as inevitable as A-B-C. Easy as 1-2-3. Simple as do-re-mi. So to speak. Michael Jackson’s untimely death has unleashed a flood of spam looking to capitalize upon the intense worldwide interest right now in the self-styled King of Pop. Since his death was truly unexpected, the first wave of this flood was fairly benign, as spam goes. Computer World reports on the early efforts of spammers: Hackers are using Michael Jackson’s death to try and trick people into disclosing personal details, says Sophos. According to the security vendor, less than 24 hours after the death ... more

Twitter was never meant to be a revolutionary tool, as (reportedly) even its founders admit. But it has been thrust into the limelight of the world’s stage as the protest movement in Iran found that Twitter met the needs of reporting what was going on in Tehran to the rest of the world better than any other online tool available. Then, as with any hot topic in world news, came the spam. Because social networking sites instantaneously register what is hot among its users, and because corporations have gotten wise to this as a channel for advertising, the two ... more

I would have guessed “Russia,” myself, but a new study is out from the University of Alabama at Birmingham has fingered China as the worst spam country in the world. Not so much for generating the spam itself, but for facilitating the sites spam directs the unsuspecting user to. Domain names are cheap in China, and companies there offer “bullet-proof” ISP services which ignore any complaints made about their customers. This means that, wherever the spam originates from (wherever the email or other type of spam is actually generated, in other words), almost three-fourths of it directs users ... more