spam

9 Articles

Company Shutdown Causes 2/3rds Drop In All Spam

November 12, 2008 by 26 Comments

The Washington Post is reporting that the shutdown of one hosting company has caused the total volume of spam to drop by 2/3rds. The company in question is McColo Corp. Both Hurricane Electric and Global Crossing pulled the plug today after a damning report revealed a number of illegal activities happening on McColo’s servers. McColo already had a reputation with the security community. When contacted about abuse, the company would often shift servers to new IP ranges instead of shutting them down. Although not the main source of spam, the company was host to many botnet control servers and phishing sites.

[photo: mattdork]

[via Waxy]

Antivirus Products Still Fail On Fresh Viruses

August 15, 2008 by 10 Comments


Many computer users rely on antivirus software from McAfee and Symantec to protect their computers from malware, worms, and viruses. Since the creation of viruses outpaces the protection abilities of the software, antivirus protection lags behind and may not be as secure as you think. [Gary Warner] provides some examples of current malware making the rounds that continue to be unaddressed by anti-virus vendors, including the recent “CNN Alerts: Breaking News” spam, which morphed into MSNBC alert spoofs. Our advice? Keep your antivirus software updated, but don’t believe that it will catch everything for you. Only open files from sources you know and trust.

[via Waxy]