Cyber Crime Hits Big Time This Year

An anonymous reader writes to point out the Washington Post's analysis of this year's spike in junk email and online attacks, such as botnets and worms. Image-embedded spam emails made up an amazing percentage of all messages sent in the months of October and November, and something like four million bots are actively adding to that total. These botnets are also increasingly connected to organized crime, as are 'independent' hacker groups. The article goes on for three pages, and doesn't have a lot of hope that 2007 will look a whole lot better. From the article: "Experts worry that businesses will be slow to switch to the [Windows Vista]. And even if consumers rush to upgrade exiting machines or purchase new ones that include Vista, Microsoft will continue to battle security holes in legacy versions of Microsoft Office, which are expected to remain in widespread use for the next 5-10 years."

Comments

Thank you Spamthru & Warezov

[GrumpySimon]

Not much on specifics in TFA, but apparently the major increase in spam (mainly those pump'n'dump stock scams) appears to due to the Spamthru trojan which is being dropped by Warezov.

We've had a few stories on this before here and here.

Printable version

[Anonymous Coward]

...so there is more article than ads.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/12/22/AR2006122200367_pf.html

Old people!

[autophile]

An anonymous reader writes to point out the Washington News's analysis of this year's spike in telemarketers gulling lonely old people, such as lonely old men and lonely old women, out of their life's savings.

"Experts worry that older people will be slow to switch to the [old folk's home]. And even if consumers rush to put in a home existing old people or purchase new ones that include no life's savings, younger folks will continue to battle security holes in legacy versions of the Old version of People, which are expected to remain in widespread use, and even grow, for the next 5-10 years."

As long as there is prey, there will be predators. Stamping out the predators is a game of whack-a-mole, so the best solution is to try to educate the prey. And if you can't, well, what are you going to do? Legislate against it? Pfft!

--Rob

DONE!

[sciop101]

Spamhous! http://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/networks.lasso/