Spam / Phishing Breaking News

How CAPTCHA got trashed
CAPTCHA used to be an easy and useful way for Web administrators to authenticate users. Now it's an easy and useful way for malware authors and spammers to do their dirty work. More..

Judge puts off 'spam king' sentencing
A federal judge in Seattle on Monday did not sentence Robert Soloway, the man known as the spam king, because all of the scheduled witnesses did not have time to take the stand, even after two full days of testimony. More..

Weight-loss supplement dealer settles spam charges
The marketers of supposed weight-loss supplements have settled charges by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that they used illegal spam e-mail to market their products. More..

Should 'spam king' Soloway pay the price for worse?
Notorious spam king Robert Alan Soloway is scheduled to be sentenced Monday by the U.S. District Court in Seattle after pleading guilty to single counts of mail fraud, e-mail fraud, and tax evasion. Judge Marsha Pechman, who is presiding over the case, has scheduled a two-day hearing starting Friday to allow prosecution and defense to get their final arguments before the court. More..

Botnets winning spam wars, says report
The world's antispam systems are fighting a furious but hopeless battle against botnet spam, a new threat analysis from Commtouch has claimed. More..

Engate sniffs bots with new mail rules
ISPs and large enterprises are being offered a novel way to stop spam that goes beyond the mere filtering of e-mail messages - detect and block the botnet zombies that generate much of the problem in the first place. More..

Diary of a deliberately spammed housewife
The Global S.P.A.M. Diaries was an experiment by McAfee to find out what would happen if 50 volunteers from around the world put aside common sense and answered every e-mail spam that came to them, chronicling the results. Tracy Mooney, a married mother of three in Naperville, Ill., was among them, and she tells what she saw in her online identity as "Penelope Retch". More..

MySpace users struggle to overcome cybervandalism
One of the first social networking upstarts, MySpace, is facing continuing security problems that threaten to spoil many of the innovative features that make the site useful. More..

Malware, spam, botnets growing faster than ever before
The spam and malware tsunami continues to cast a mounting shadow over the Internet this week. More..

Antispam group outlines defenses to block botnet spam
A major antispam organization is pushing a set of new best practices for ISPs (Internet service providers) to stop increasing volumes of spam from botnets. More..

Storm storms back with porn scam
Security researchers Friday warned of a new, massive spam campaign that tries to convince users to install the long-running Storm bot Trojan on their PCs. More..

ESoft spam filter goes mobile
Security appliance developer eSoft has updated its e-mail gateway with the ability for users to spam-file or whitelist e-mails from any device, including a BlackBerry or smartphone. Previously, only Outlook users could train the gateway's Bayesian spam-filter. More..

Spam-free blog search goes public
Swedish startup Twingly is going public with its blog search-engine, which is being built to deliver spam-free search results. More..

Authentication and trust
I attended the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) Summit in Seattle last week. The Alliance, spearheaded by Craig Spiezle at Microsoft, is focused on improving trust in the e-mail and e-commerce ecosystems, and in pursuing technologies and best practices focused on fighting the ill effects of online fraud. The event was well attended and provided a great deal of useful information and networking. More..

More laws, collaboration required for online safety
Washington state's attorney general is only half joking when he suggests that perhaps sites like Facebook and MySpace should require members to use a credit card to sign up for access as a way to prove their identity. More..

Hong Kong, China Web domains cited as "most dangerous"
Hong Kong and China are the "most dangerous" places to surf the Web based on country domain, according to McAfee's annual assessment of the riskiest and safest places in cyberspace.  More..

Trend Micro bolsters security package
Trend Micro announces Worry-Free Business Security product line for small to midsize businesses More..

EU security agency wants social network scrutiny
Europe's top Internet security agency, ENISA, called Tuesday for new legislation to police social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. More..

MySpace hit by application spam
Like Facebook before it, MySpace is having to take corrective steps to curb spam from applications built by external developers using its new application development platform. More..

Popular open source spam filter gets boost
SpamAssassin, popular open source spam-filtering software, will have deadlier aim thanks to an add-on tool that is being offered free of charge to small businesses and individuals by MailChannels.  More..

Spammers handed record $234 million fine - eat that
The U.S. CAN-SPAM law has chewed another alleged spam outfit, this time handing out a world record fine of $234 million (£116 million) to two individuals. More..

MPP controls spam for Mac e-mail servers
Message Partners has announced the release of MPP for Mac OS X e-mail and collaboration servers. MPP is an antispam system designed for small and medium-sized businesses and service providers. More..

Parasitic botnet spams 60 billion a day
The Srizbi botnet has stormed over its competition to become the Internet's biggest spammer. More..

McAfee, Yahoo team on Web security
McAfee and Yahoo today announced a partnership on Web security in which Yahoo's search engine is making freely available to users the warnings about unwanted or malicious code on Web sites as determined through McAfee's security technology. More..

Malware vs. anti-malware, 20 years into the fray
As I recall, Nov. 2, 1988, started as an ordinary day at Goddard Space Flight Center where I was working in the data communications branch. By the end of the day ... well, actually, that day never ended. We just kept fighting to bring our servers and networks back to life. Our SunOS and VAX/BSD systems, which were connected to the Internet, had slowed to a stop. More..