Austrian domain registrar 'aids' phishers
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Spamhaus gives black mark to Nic.at Anti-spam organisation Spamhaus has taken the unusual step of putting an entry for Austrian Domain Registrar Nic.at on its Spamhaus Block List (SBL).â¦
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Owner files retaliatory suit The organisation behind the .eu domain has suspended 10,000 domain names registered by a Chinese woman whom it accuses of being a cybersquatter. The woman, in retaliation, has filed a lawsuit in Belgium.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Spammers have found a way to mine free Web-hosting services for cash. Online scammers have long used free hosting services such as Yahoo Geocities or Tripod as a way to get around e-mail filters that might otherwise recognize their spammy Web sites. But now some enterprising spammers have begun selling each other these free Web pages, according to security vendor McAfee Inc. For US$25 per week a spammer will sell 50 Web-hosting accounts that can be used to redirect Web traffic to sites that normally would be flagged. "These 'link providers' create and maintain thousands of free hosting accounts on behalf of the spammers," wrote McAfee's Nick Kelly in a recent posting to McAfee's Avert Labs blog. That posting can be foundÂ here. "They know that the bigger hosts are unlikely to get blacklisted because they have so many legitimate users," he added. Scammers also use the free Web pages to try to manipulate search engines, by making it look as if their Web sites are widely linked, said Adam O'Donnell, senior research scientist with Cloudmark Inc., an e-mail filtering company. And while the free hosting providers are taking steps to shut down this abuse, they appear to be fighting a losing battle. In late June, Cloudmark researchers were seeing about 1,500 phony URLs (uniform resource locators) on any given day on one of the most abused free hosting services (O'Donnell declined to name names). One month later, that number had jumped to 3,500. Spammers are simply able to out-pace the hosters' security teams, O'Donnell said. "They will gain more hosts for their pages than the company is able to take down," he said. The free hosters have been placed in a tough position because they do not want to shut down legitimate users, but they also do not have the technical resources to mine spam for Web pages that are being misused, O'Donnell said. Lately, however, the hosters have been partnering with security vendors to address the problem. Cloudmark is working with some hosting providers, hoping to sell them "reputation" information that tells them how many times their member URLs are being seen in spam. McAfee has been providing similar information to an undisclosed service provider, Kelly wrote. "This relationship has cut the abuse observed by us on that provider by over 90 percent in less than a week." He added, "let's hope those spammers are buying their new watches from pound$hop rather than Bolex this summer."
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Interesting tidbit that was Slashdotted earlier - Netcraft has released an anti-phishing toolbar that leverages the enormous database of web sites the organization manages.
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A screensaver targeting spam-related websites appears to have been too successful.
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Trojan spam scam nipped in the bud German police have arrested ten people suspected of running a phishing scam designed to raid the contents of online bank accounts that netted hundreds of thousands of euros.â¦
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A practice used by scammers to siphon off hits from users who misspell URLs in their browsers could be rendered impossible this year, as the organization responsible for the Internet's domain name system may end the program that makes the practice possible.
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Found in the search marketing forums: Google Project Knol; Site Created Using All Images; Multiple Hyphens in Root Domain = Spam? and more.
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Phishing scams, already one of the main nemesis on the Net, have apparently just become even more sneaky -- and ingenious. Now, it appears phishing authors are borrowing some time-tested tactics
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Network Solutions, a major registrar of Internet domain names, counters accusations it's grabbing domain names after customers show an interest but before they register them.
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Do-it-yourself phishing kits are being made available for download free of charge from the Internet, according to anti-virus firm Sophos.
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A phishing scam has been detected that doesn&#39;t require users to click on a link in order to jeopardise their personal data. Simply opening the email may be enough, according to Messagelabs.
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Malware arrives in German spam that claims to contain an update from Microsoft.
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The Internet's key oversight agency is investigating suspicions that insider information is being used to snatch desired domain names before an individual or business can register them.
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Network Solutions is standing by its controversial policy of automatically registering some domain names that are the subject of searches on the companyâs Web site.
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The attorney general's request that banks send spam to warn of phishing has some befuddled.
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Thar she blows Opera has added third-party fraud protection components to the latest revision of its web browser software, Opera 9.1. The fraud protection includes technology from GeoTrust, the digital certificate provider, and PhishTank, a clearing house for data on phishing scams.â¦