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Malicious Spam Spikes To 'Epic' Level
Trailrunner7 writes "There has been a huge spike in spam volume in the last few days, including a massive amount of malicious spam with infected attachments, and researchers say that levels of junk mail are now far higher than they were before the takedown of the notorious Spamit affiliate program last fall. The huge spike comes at a time when spam should, in fact, be dropping because of the takedown of the Rustock botnet, the Spamit network and other botnets. 'From the beginning of August, we have observed a huge surge of malicious spam which far exceeds anything we have seen over the past two years, including prior to the SpamIt takedown last October. The majority of the malicious spam comes from the Cutwail botnet, although Festi and Asprox are among the other contributors,' M86 researcher Rodel Mendrez said."
they just build it back up again, you can do this for the rest of history and still be in the same place, much like the war on drugs
my graphs show a steady decline in spam capture rates since October, 2010. we're measuring an average daily rate about 1/2 of this time last year. (millions of mail boxes, dozens of MX servers, decent antispam filtering) We're blocking around %91.2 of mail at the perimeter as opposed to %98.8 last year.
What's this "email" thing I keep hearing about? Does anyone use it?
Apparently, most of the current spam is aimed at building new botnets. Which is sort of what you'd expect after a lot of botnets are taken down.
Yeah, I noticed it... I only have 3 email accounts and get batches of 15-20 emails every 5-10 minutes with the Win32/Kryptik.RAM trojan virus (ups notifications and invoices) ... they go straight to spam
If these knuckleheads ever learn correct English, we're screwed.
Yup, send out massive amounts of mails to people that automatically
whipes all Windows-partitions and installs Linux.
People will cry and booo, until they realize their machines suddenly works. Forever.
Maybe if the ISPs put forth even the smallest effort at notifying users that their computers appear to have been comprimised some of this would drop off in a meaningful way.
They must've turned it up to 11.
#DeleteChrome
It's "Micro$oft.
What is even more amazing is that with all the blocking and getting information out to users apparently spam is still profitable enough to keep on doing it. I have *never* responded to email spam but enough people must. Truly amazing.
I volunteer in a call center for consumer help.
Many older people (that call us, anyway) think of email offers or anything via email for that matter, on the same level as regular mail. In other words, if they get an offer in their email inbox, it has the same weight as something they get in their regular mail - is the best way I can explain it.
It's the same with the email spam from certain lobbying organizations that claim that their Social Security and Medicare are going to be cut and they need to RESPOND NOW and DONATE to stop this! - regardless of the merits of the claim.
If someone in an email says they "checked it out and it's TRUE" they believe them, too.
We need to tell our parents and grand parents to treat all unsolicited email as scams and even have serious doubts about emails from organizations that they do deal with.
When our anti-spam activities center on filtering received mail and chasing down the spammers themselves. Eventually someone else comes in and comes up with a different way to send spam so it gets around existing filters, which just starts a new round of whac-a-mole.
Until we do something about the motivating factors behind spam - that is, the economics of spam - we will continue to get nowhere, while wasting more time and money on the problem.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I run a SMTP server, and have noticed a lot of SPAM traffic and hacking attempts coming from China. In addition to running OSSEC's "active response" (firewalling), I've added blocking whole ranges of IP addresses from China. Cut down on my bogus traffic by "2/3rds".
If everybody stopped clicking on the spam, opening the attachments, etc... suddenly it wouldn't be profitable and it would stop.
Finished reading? Good job you didn't click on spam while u were reading this, now just do it, now just keep at it... baby steps... no viagra ftw.
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Mrs.Isabella Caromel
Obviously, these are names fit for medicine:
Cutwail - a pain blocker
Festi - makes soft muscles hard again
Asprox - makes your bowels work faster
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
A security company with 11 products designed to solve your spam problem, has made a picture showing a bombastic and ludicrous increase in spam the likes of which you cannot possibly cope with. This spam targets your genitals using african money laundering transfers to smuggle a dirty bomb into your new nike jordans and boochi bags at 80% discount, and free shipping.
It is imperative you believe this un-renound seldom-published security engineer working for a vague corporation that runs its main website on a dated version of microsoft IIS 6.0 with ASP. this company worked hard to ensure its pretty pictures had maximum market placement, and slashdot is no exception.
Good people go to bed earlier.
There's still companies willing to pay for it, so there's still some greedy fucks willing to take it. The desire/benefit of getting the extra edge will prompt the greedy to distort laws/policies in order to profit from having something that others with more scruples (or who simply aren't in a position to cover their ass with expensive lawyers, to compete in terms of what they can get away with) won't have. It needs to become undesirable to carry out this practice, and for that there needs to be severe penalties, or consumer awareness such that it gives those who practice a negative enough perception that it causes sales to drop. Spam is usually delegated and it is not obvious who is (indirectly) behind it, so the latter will probably not happen any time soon.
Twinstiq, game news
The problem with that approach is that the economics of spam are totally slanted in favour of the spammer.
One machine can send out MILLIONS of spam messages per day.
And it only takes a couple of people purchasing something to make it profitable.
Instead, focus on understanding the spam process. I was able to reduce 99%+ of spam at one place I worked using SpamAssassin, clamAV, a Bayesian filter and lots of spam trap email addresses on a smart host.
Does this really surprise anyone. It is like a damn hydra. Chop off one head and 2 new ones grow in its place.
Time to offend someone
First spamassassin, then whatever it thinks is ham gets fed through bogofilter (Bayesian). What comes out of that is almost pure ham. Some stragglers get through but its not a major deal.
H.
If they ever learned correct English (non-copied, random, yet intelligent looking grammar), we'd lose a valuable tool in both machine AND human filtering of spam.
But, at that point, SkyNet will kill us all anyways, so I'm not too worried just yet.
I8-D
As opposed to the cute, warm and fuzzy kind that people just love receiving?
Overall spam volume is down, based on M86 Security and others. http://www.m86security.com/labs/spam_statistics.asp
My own spam rates via GMail, and my own domain, show spam rates down by 50% since last year.
It might depend on who you read. Try googling "spam statistics" and you'll get quite a mix of "spam is up," "spam is down."
So, then...they're purple?
They are compromising accounts now, using, in part, the data collected by the lulzsec breaches. I have several friends using yahoo who have now sent me spam messages. Their old tactics have been rendered ineffective by spam fighting efforts, so now they are doing this.
I'm currently getting mountains of spam exhorting me to remodel my home, buy a new patio deck, buy business cards, even find a new apartment. Stuff that looks like junk mail I'd get on paper, except that it's cluttering up my email. Lots comes from some filth calling themselves Eclipse Media Online, who hope I enjoyed receiving their garbage. Yeah, right.
I actually do like getting email from companies I do business with, everybody from Mouser to Sephora. Emails from Barefoot Tess tend to be hard on my bank account. :-)
...laura
After reading TFA, it clearly shows why this is NOT an issue us... we don't allow zip attachments with the same types of files in them which can have viruses in them in the first place. We don't allow type files matching what would be extensions of: cmd com js reg chm cnf hta ins scf sct vbs vbe wsc wsf wsh xnk mad maf mag mar mas mat mav maw bat pif scr exe wmf.
Been doing this since 2003 and missed most of the virus fun that others have had.
The only viruses we ever see are possible web links in email that point to a site/file download. And we get most of those too.
I was right!
I knew that lunch meat was up to no good. I could swear it was eying me suspiciously every time I opened the fridge. I should be wearing the aluminum foil, not the foodstuffs.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'd open my Inbox and only find legitimate emails in it. Then the current spike in spam started. Deadly? No. It's nithing that Ctrl-click-click-click-...-Delete can't handle. Annoying? Yep. And a little insulting. Do these bozo spammers really think I'm -- or anyone for that matter -- going to open an attachment from an email that has the same Subject: line as eight other emails in my Inbox? And do they really think that all of my UPS shipments have been going to the wrong address? Or that I would be expecting invoices from 17 different companies per day? (And I'm not even counting the daily Cialis, Viagra, and fake Rolex watch come-ons.) Come on you idiots. You're going to have to try harder than that.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I have a four point plan that I guarantee will eliminate spam once and for all:
1. Find the spammers and kill them.
2. Find anyone buys spammer's services and kill them.
3. Find anyone who is stupid enough to allow their PC to become infected more than twice and kill them.
4. Find Steve Ballmer and Darl McBride and kill them.
Okay its actually a three point plan. I just added Ballmer and McBride because I don't like them.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
When is the delicious spam going to be delivered? I'm tired of the malicious sort.
Just reject spf soft and hard fails. That takes care of 80% of the spam and 1% legit users (tell the legit users to fix their spf records). Take forwarded for headers and filter them based on previous spam - that is another 5-10%. Next filter for pharmaceuticals, watches, travel, and gambling and you have another 3-5%. Post a couple honeypot email addresses on the web and that should grab just about every spammer on the planet after a year or so. Filter through spamhaus or another rbl that handles only recent activity and an antivirus program + file extension filter and your job is done. PS don't let out the secret or we'll all be out of the job and then no more margaritas for you!
I have Cyrus - so I do username+folder@example.com for my interactions with the world.
3 folder@example.com emails are being used in the UPS/IRS/other topics. 2 of the 3 original parties I emailed have claimed they have not shared/sold the email and they only interacted with Constant Contact. All 3 were last used over a year ago.
Thus far - Constant Contact has not returned my call.
Epic, huh? Really? Did it destroy Troy, or get lost at sea for ten years? Is it anywhere near that epic level of magnitude? I don't think so.
I've gotten spam in the last three days for the first time in many, many months. Ubuntu/Thunderbird/POP
MS should now focus on the next 2 biggest ones...and keep at it, until the bad guys see there is no money to make any more with malware!
I hope MS jumps on the security good guy band wagon for awhile, and thinks less of the bottom line
Out of curiosity, are allowed to tell us which company you work for ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]