FBI: Expect more spam prosecutions
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. Internet users should expect a growing number of prosecutions for sending spam and related activities, such as creating botnets, officials with two U.S. law enforcement organizations said Thursday. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has 70 active investigations into spam-related crimes, said FBI special agent J. Keith Mularski, speaking at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's spam summit. The FBI has worked with the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), a partnership between law enforcement agencies, universities, and private businesses, to identity spammers, he said. The NCFTA, launched in 2002, has identified more than 100 "significant spammers," including five tied to traditional organized crime, Mularski said. Partnerships with industry are important to fight cybercrime, Mularski said. The Internet Crime Complaint Center, a joint operation of the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, gets more than 22,000 complaints about cybercrime each month, up from 18,000 complaints a month last year, he said. "If we don't address it together, it's only going to get worse," he said. "Industry has all the information, because these guys are hitting their networks." The U.S. Department of Justice is targeting several spam-related activities, added Mona Sedky Spivack, a trial attorney in the DOJ Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. In June, theÂ DOJ and FBI launchedÂ Operation Bot Roast, targeting criminals who use networks of compromised computers, often called botnets, to send spam and launch distributed denial-of-service attacks. In addition to targeting "bot herders," criminals who control botnets, the DOJ will begin targeting "bot brokers," the people who negotiate the sale of botnet resources, she said. "We're going to start pegging them with some criminal liability," she said. "There is a lot of money getting exchanged here." Botnets and anonymous proxies are popular with spammers right now because they don't have to use their own computer resources to send the e-mail messages, Spivack said. This makes it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to track down spammers. The DOJ and other federal agencies are also targeting stock-scheme spam campaigns, she said. In a typical "pump and dump" stock scheme, spammers buy cheap stocks, then send out huge volumes of spam telling recipients that the stock price is poised to rise. The stock price goes up because of the spam campaign, and the spammers sell their stock at a large profit. On Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionÂ filed securities fraud chargesÂ against two Texas men for an alleged pump and dump scheme. The scheme allegedly cost investors $4.6 million. Despite news reports of such schemes, they tend to work, Spivack said. "It appeals to unsophisticated investors who are day traders at home," she said. The U.S. Congress passed the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act in 2003, and there's still debate over whether the law has reduced the amount of spam U.S. Internet users receive. CAN-SPAM allows senders to deliver unsolicited commercial e-mail, but requires that they stop when a recipient asks them to. CAN-SPAM also requires that commercial e-mail have accurate header information, have a legitimate postal address for the sender and have a working opt-out mechanism. The law has given some spammers a set of rules they must follow to become legitimate marketers, said Aaron Kornblum, a senior attorney with Microsoft. But law breakers have become inventive as law enforcement and private companies find new ways to combat spam, he added. Some spammers rotate the URLs (uniform resource locators) in their spam, making it difficult to track, others don't include URLs at all, he said. Some used pixelated text to defeat spam filters. "We need our investigative techniques to evolve," he said.
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The Storm season may be tapering off, but the botnet still managed to push out 15 million audio-spam messages flogging a pump-and-dump stock scheme this month.
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Federal and state law enforcement agencies have quietly arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.
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Two men behind a spam ring that sent millions of pornographic mails are the first to be convicted under new federal spam laws, the Justice Department said.
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The Justice Department has made a series of arrests against purveyors of spam as part of a nationwide crackdown against internet scam artists, the Direct Marketing Association said.
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Prosecutors say the trial is the nation's first felony prosecution of spammers and could lead to future litigation in the fight against spam, which experts say accounts for more than 70 percent of e-mails.
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For years, spam haters have relied on junk-mail filters and Internet blacklists, but some are saying it's time for a change in tactics.
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Another day, another filter-evading tactic from the spammer. This time, they're pitching their woo in the form of e-mail stationery "backgrounds," which aren't generally scanned by filtering tools. Experts say the trend is rising.
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The attorney general's request that banks send spam to warn of phishing has some befuddled.
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Task force plans antispam campaign, from education to cross-border legal efforts.
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The Justice Department announced Thursday that more than 150 people had been arrested, charged or convicted in the last three months in a wide-ranging sweep of criminal activity on the Internet.
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An advanced spamming technique could push the volume of unwanted e-mail to new heights in coming months, straining the integrity of the online communication system, according to several top experts who monitor the activity of spam gangs around the world.
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House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has asked the Justice Department to cast a wide net in its investigation of lewd e-mails sent by a Republican legislator to young pages, even looking into whether other lawmakers learned of them and failed to notify authorities. But legal experts said yesterday that...
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MessageLabs reports a surge in malicious spam aimed at individuals in senior management positions--and their family members.
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US enforcement agencies have arrested or charged dozens of people with crimes related to junk e-mail, identity theft and other online scams in recent weeks, according to several people involved in the actions.
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Hoping to clean up the Internet&#39;s reputation as a haven for scam artists, federal officials unveiled a series of arrests, indictments and convictions Thursday involving a range of cyberfraud.
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(InfoWorld) - The European Commission has warned its member states to beef up their efforts to cut spam, spyware and malicious software, after research showed that up to 85 percent of all e-mail received in the European Union is unsolicited.The findings come four years after the EU adopted anti-spam legislation in the form of the e-privacy directive. "It is time to turn the repeated political concern about spam into concrete actions to fight spam," Viviane Reding, the commissioner for Information Society and Media, said in a statement on Monday.If there is no improvement by this time next year, Reding will consider introducing new legislative measures to fight the scourge, she said.She pointed to the Netherlands as an example of how the current legal regime can be used to cut spam. Hollandâs spam-busting unit, known by the initials OPTA, has just five full-time staff and â¬570,000 (US$747,000) worth of equipment, and has succeeded in cutting spam by 85 percent. âI'd like to see other countries achieving similar results through more efficient enforcement,â Reding said.Finland was also singled out for praise. A filtering system there has cut the amount of spam to 30 percent of all e-mail, from 80 percent two years ago, the Commission said.âWe encourage other countries in the Union to develop similar filtering means,â said Martin Selmayr, Redingâs spokesman, at a press conference Monday.The Commission is urging other countries âto lay down clear lines of responsibility to use the tools available under E.U. law effectively." Better cooperation with enforcement authorities from other countries, including countries outside the Union, is essential to defeat the spammers, the Commission said.The U.S. remains the single biggest source of spam, accounting for 22 percent of all spam received in the EU, the Commission said. China is the second largest source, accounting for 13 percent. France and South Korea rank joint third at 6 percent.The U.S. and the EU have agreed to tackle spam through joint enforcement initiatives, the Commission said.Last year, Ferris Research estimated spam to cost â¬39 billion worldwide, while fellow researcher Computer Economics calculated malicious software to cost â¬11 billion worldwide.The Commission's latest communication on spam is available here in several languages.