Backing for tool to battle spam
24218
A tool that could help in the battle against spam and phishing attacks receives industry approval.
707033
A variation of spam is sliding past spam filters into inboxes, but it&#39;s not likely the new trick will be successful much longer, a security expert said Thursday.The spam messages, urging recipients to buy a stock, have an MP3 audio attachment but no subject line or text, said John Graham-Cumming, an anti-spam consultant and researcher who is based in France.&quot;I think this is the first time we&#39;ve seen this,&quot; said Graham-Cumming, who tracks new kinds of spam.The audio messages, which vary in length, contain a warbled, robotic voice with a British accent encouraging people to invest in Exit Only, a company that owns a Web site, www.Text4Cars.com, which connects vehicle buyers and sells through SMS (Short Message Service). Exit Only says it&#39;s not involved in sending the spam.Graham-Cumming said the spam falls into the category of &quot;pump and dump&quot; fraud. Scammers invest in a company with a low-priced stock and send out a round of spam, causing gullible investors to buy it and increase the stock&#39;s price.As the stock price peaks, fraudsters cash out, which causes the stock to precipitously fall, burning other investors. The practice is illegal.Exit Only was trading around $0.41 on Thursday. Not much detail is available on the company, but it issued a news release on Tuesday heralding the launch of its Text4Cars service in the Los Angeles area. The news release said the company hoped to be fully launched in the United States in early 2008.Exit Only&#39;s CEO, David Dion, said he learned of the spam around Wednesday morning. He has since notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and said his company has nothing to do with the spam run.&quot;I am very distraught by this,&quot; Dion said.Dion said only about 100 shares have been traded so far, so the scam hasn&#39;t been successful.The messages are more annoying than harmful. But there are a variety of defenses e-mail administrators and security companies can employ to stop it, Graham-Cumming said.Spam filters can be configured to cull messages with MP3s, since most companies don&#39;t have a business use for the file type, Graham-Cumming said. Administrators can also change their e-mail server settings to slow down the speed at which they receive messages with MP3 attachments, he said.That method has been proven to frustrate spammers, who typically shut down the connection if the spam isn&#39;t going through quickly enough since the delay consumes valuable bandwidth, Graham-Cumming said.These spam messages are also relatively large -- around 100KB -- compared to other spam, which may be another reason this kind of spam may not be around for long. Spam messages with larger file sizes require more bandwidth to send, meaning spammers can&#39;t send out high volumes of messages, Graham-Cumming said.&quot;Honestly, my prediction is this is going to be around for a while and disappear,&quot; he said.E-mail security company MessageLabs said it was catching about 10,000 spam messages with MP3s per hour since late Wednesday night.
59425
Does your email program accept hidden JavaScript commands?
159077
Try not to smile: A top spammer may be sentenced to hard time.
31868
MADRID, Spain Some computer users are about to find out if fighting fire with fire works when they fight spam with spam. German-based Lycos Europe offers a free screensaver program that hits back at spam senders by flooding them with junk traffic.
474060
"Sender ID"  technique to stymie junk e-mailers is failing to drawing underwhelming support.
169337
A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97 per cent of spam.
669540
A technological weapon against unwanted ''spam&quot; e-mails that has been embraced by leading Internet companies doesn't work as well as its developers had hoped, according to a new study.
624957
Ziff Davis - Commtouch's anti-spam software update halts spam by tracking e-mail server sending patterns.
347462
Microsoft (Quote, Chart) has fired another salvo in its ongoing spam battle, this time against porn peddlers who don&#39;t keep their smut inside the digital equivalent of a &quot;Brown Paper Wrapper.
550973
Spammers are a key adopter of a technology meant, in part, to fight spam.
147647
Do you have any suggestions for individuals and small businesses to combat spam?
69219
com. Spammers are trying to make their junk mail look more legit by adopting the same technologies intended to stem their message tsunamis, said a filtering firm Wednesday.
173577
Shark Tank: Spam is heavy at this mortgage company, so a consultant is brought in to review six months of accumulated spam and set up an antispam appliance that should kill 98% of the junk. Everyone's happy. Then it goes live.
268536
A new application from Lycos Europe aims to fight back against spammers, but some experts say the company may be enabling illegal activities.
217608
New software allows recipients of spam to band together to target known websites behind the messages. The idea is to bombard the sites with messages, slowing them down and making them more expensive to run.
122932
We're being inundated by spam.  How could community-based approaches help?