Every so often the command and control servers for a botnet get taken down, and we are told breathlessly by the more extravagant security experts that this botnet was responsible for a quarter (or a half or a third) or all the world’s spam, and that we can expect to see a big reduction in [...]
Today the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that they have charged 29 defendants with collectively sending 180 million unwanted text messages. The text messages advertised “Free” Gift cards or prizes from major retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Target. However, consumers who clicked on the links contained in the text messages were required to provide [...]
It’s great to see Twitter taking the lead on the URL shortener security. Twitter acquired Dasient earlier in the year and it’s refreshing to see them being put into action securing the t.co linkage and what’s more t.co is now going to front more and more links seen in the service. Further reading: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/9883076/Twitter-shortens-tweets-by-two-characters.html Since [...]
Yesterday, a news article on my local public radio station caught my attention. On Wednesday, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) put out the report: “Countering the Problem of Falsified and Substandard Drugs”. The report was created at the request of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Lawerence Gostin, the Georgetown University law professor and World [...]
One of the most common sorts of SMS spam in the UK relates to Payment Protection Insurance or PPI. Because of unethical selling practices by the loan industry, many UK consumers can claim thousands of pounds in compensation, and private companies who assist them in claiming that compensation (for a fee) are willing to pay [...]
At first glance it might seem that the decision if an email is spam or not is a black and white one – either it’s spam or it isn’t. However, the closer you get to the problem, the more complex it becomes, and many shades of grey start to appear. For example, last Thanksgiving I [...]
Sometimes I love my job. How cool is it to run a Turing Test for real? But first, the back story… For a while now we’ve been receiving SMS spam reports for a three stage attack. This starts with an SMS text message conversation, moves to Yahoo! Messenger or Skype and ends up on the [...]
Early last year I wrote about the increasing amount of spam that was using hacked web servers to obfuscate the spammer’s call to action. Back then the volume was creeping up to 1% of all spam. Since we’ve been seeing even more of it lately, I decided to take a look at the figures and [...]
A couple of days ago all the domains used by the Android Spambot went offline and have stayed down. This includes the Command and Control servers, so the army of zombie droids are now headless. However, if you did get tricked into installing this malware it will still be blocking some of your incoming texts, [...]
Yesterday we told you about an Android trojan used to send SMS spam. Currently, the versions of this malware being distributed by the spammer are: angrybirds.apk MD5 = a0e7a47c6b3582f9c9a4c5166eb0eace gtavicecity.apk MD5 = a8de900d9ff269455f4344b8e8409699 needforspeed.apk MD5 = c18bc53d74e8a6926453a8c86355501a The Command and Control server has moved to pinktrash.mobi, though imperialistic.mobi is still functional for the handsets infected [...]