[LINK] communications ..

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Robin writes,

> I use email a lot .. and dozens of spams get through a day.  About 400
> a day are caught by SpamAssassin .. email is by far (my) most frequent
> source of incoming communication ..

Am guessing this would be true for many of us ..

> From:   securitypronews at ientrynetwork.net
> Date:   Thu, 5 Feb 2009 16:00:28 -0500 

AppRiver says January saw a 120% increase in total email traffic. 

Of nine million messages, over 97 percent were spam or carried a virus, 
according to the company's Threat and Scamscape Report for February. 

Most spam in January, the vast majority, originated in Europe (34%) and 
Asia (27%), with a large increase from South America (19%). 

It's possible the McColo takedown severely lessened the amount of spam 
originating from North America (12%). 

Brazil, actually, became the spammiest nation on Earth last month, 
tripling previous levels and taking the USA's spot as the world's top 
spammer. Not because the Ukraine didn't try-despite a 930% year-over-year 
increase and roughly 150 million spam messages, the former Soviet 
republic managed to make only the top eight. 

After Brazil, USA, India, China, Russia, Turkey, Columbia, Ukraine, 
Korea, and Poland round out the world's most spammy nations in January. 

Methods used by spammers have gotten more sophisticated. Spoofing has 
become popular as scammers try to trick recipients into thinking the 
email is from a recognized authority source. AppRiver says they've 
intercepted spoofs appearing to be from Men's Health magazine, Omaha 
Steaks, Microsoft, Food Network, and the IRS. Many carried attachments or 
graphical links to Canadian pharmacies. 

The Conficker worm-aka Downadup, Kido-continues to be the malware to 
watch. 

Conficker should have been reasonably contained by a patch issued by 
Microsoft in November closing up a vulnerability in Windows Server 
Service RPC. Those who did not install the patch are still vulnerable to 
this sophisticated worm that has already spread to at least 5 million 
PCs, mostly in countries other than the US and UK. 

The reigning theory behind Conficker's spread in countries like China, 
Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Taiwan, and India is the prevalence of pirated 
Windows operating systems where the automatic update features have been 
turned off for fear of detection. 

This month, Waledac is the worm waiting to swallow up everything. The 
reincarnation of Storm, this botnet has picked up where it left off 
during the US Election and Christmas season by sending out Valentines and 
the unromantic kind of Trojans. 

--

Cheers Robin
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia