Spyware Techie

Pricewert was known as a safe haven for spammers and was recently shut down by the Federal Trade Commission resulting in a 15% drop in Spam messages.

Total spam volume dropped by 15% percent just last week, according to the email security vendor Marshal8e6. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received a court order to takedown the Pricewert ISP. Since the takedown, spam rates have declined, which is a clear indication that they were the culprit of a vast amount of spam.

Pricewert was home to a good amount of illegal activity which includes the distribution of spyware, phishing, child pornography and viruses. The FTC confirmed this recently and issued a statement that said Pricewert shielded the criminals by either ignoring requests to take-down certain sites or transfer the criminal fundamentals to other internet protocol addresses.

Security researchers have recently discovered hackers redirecting users to thousands of newly infected websites through fake web pages.

According to Websense, a security vendor, an astonishing 40,000 or more websites have recently been hacked to redirect computer users to other web pages in an attempt to infect PC’s with malware.

The recent attacks were discovered to be a hacking incident where the affected sites host JavaScript code that is designed to redirect users to fake Google Analytics web pages and then to another malicious website. Google Analytics is a site that provides site usage data for website owners.

A new epidemic of attacks that inject Google search results with malicious links is getting worse lately.

Computer security experts have found that a search result attack has intensified in recent days and is found on many legitimate web sites, possibly thousands. CERT, the Computer Emergency Response Team, said that the attack targets known flaws in Adobe’s software and uses it to install a malicious program on the victim’s computer.

The malicious program that was found to be downloaded from the malicious sites is known to steal FTP login credentials from victims systems allowing it to use the information to spread. In addition, through this malicious program, Google search results are replaced with links chosen by the attackers to redirect users to malicious sites.

A new search technique allows spammers to harvest valid email addresses from Twitter users in real-time.

Twitter seems to be an obvious target for spammers. The new search technique used by spammers to gather large volumes of valid email address from Twitter users, is nothing complex. It is a simple process where the spammers use the search terms “email me at” and “contact me at” in a combination with a domain that the spammer chooses.

The recent Swine Flu pandemic has many people panicking mainly due to several online blogs, twitter updates and the mainstream media.

Twitter, among other popular social networks, are always a major concern when it comes to computer safety or security issues over the internet.

Blogs and Twitter now play a big role in causing an uproar on just about anything that makes news now days including the recent Swine Flu issue. Twitter is being blamed for spreading panic regarding the swine flu through several tweets.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates or tweets. Twitter was started in 2006 and since has gained worldwide popularity and social gateway to send and receive tidbits of information.

Script injected images could be the culprit of malware or malicious content in spam messages.

Reports by security firms have said that the number of sites blocked for hosting malicious content rose by 197 percent just in the month of March 2009. This was reported by MessageLabs where the stunning results may be due to the increase in web-based and email-borne images with malicious scripts injected. The other surprise part of this study is that most of these sites that were blocked due to malicious content were free image hosting sites.

Do you use any free image hosting sites for storing or sharing images? Do any of them extend to social networks allowing interconnectivity from the image source to a social networking site that you may be a member of? Spammers and hackers are using these circumstances to use scripts and SQL injections to compromise the user generated sites through images uploaded to these free image hosting sites. They use custom created ads that could redirect users to a malicious site or phishing web page.

Facebook continues to get hammered with malware and malicious links and this time it is a “Dancing Girl” message that gets users attention so that they download malware.

Security researchers and the security firm Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker Network have received reports of a malicious message being spoofed as a Facebook email message offering a dancing girl video. Within the message are links that lead users to download malware in the form of the infamous fake Adobe Flash Player update file. The file, as you may have already guessed, is Adobe_Player11.exe, which is nothing more than a malware parasite.

The spoofed Facebook email message comes with an enticing subject line that makes users think that it is a video of a dancing girl possibly on the verge of being pornography. The message looks like a normal legitimate Facebook message that invites the recipient to click on a link to view the video of the “dancing girl”.

According to McAfee, Spam is expected to increase by 20 percent in March (this month) and may cost companies about $41,000.

We all hate to hear news like this but we all must face the music because it is a very real threat, spam is on a continuous rise.

Spam messages date back to the beginning of the internet and email where spammers have been diligently working to send these malicious messages in seek of monetary gain by spreading malware or malicious website links. With the current state of the economy this is big news because it will cost companies, who already spend thousands on filtering spam messages, an additional amount to combat these messages.

Companies who have 1,000 or more employees may expect and average spending of $182,500 in spam-combat costs this year according to McAfee’s March Spam report. Spammers are finding ways to slip through current spam filters where if only an additional 4% of the spam messages slip through the cracks it can be in the thousands of dollars extra companies will have to spend to update the filters.

Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace continue to be an easy target for creators of rogue applications that spam users to gain personal information.

Just recently Facebook removed one application that was found to be rogue where it spammed users by claiming that a friend had reported them (the recipient) of violating the terms of service. If a user clicked on the link within the message it may give the application access to their profile where personal information may be stolen.

The Facebook team disabled this application but is being criticized by security experts, such as Graham Cluley, explaining that they should do more to prevent these rogue applications from spreading instead of just shutting them down on an isolated basis.

Recent security research findings have revealed that scammers are abusing Google Trends to poison Google search results with links that spread malware or fake security applications.

If you are at all familiar with Google Trends then you might be in the internet marketing field or a Google keyword search aficionado. Google Trends is a tool that highlights the most popular searches of the past hour or over a specified period of time. The tool can be used by many to promote a certain keyword due to its rising or historic popularity all displayed in charts and statistical form via the Google Trends web page.

Scammers are now using the Google Trends tool to promote their scamware or sometimes vicious fake security programs. They seek out the popular search keywords or terms and use them to integrate into their own malicious sites or product web pages. Google picks up on popular keywords and news items almost like white on rice in some cases. The hackers and cyberthieves know this and have done their homework so they are able to use any popular keywords found through Google Trends to tag onto their own products and sites.