 |
|
| CURRENT SECTION :: News |
The No. 1 Resource for UK IT Contractors: Comprehensive guides - Daily news IT contract jobs - Market rates - Forums - IT contractor network - Calculators |
|
 |
Two reports of the surge in spam over the last year have provoked apocalyptic prophesies of the end of e-mail as a viable communications medium. These reports are made more creditable by legitimate messages being swamped in a flood of ads for cheap Viagra, bogus bank messages asking for your account details, and invitations to share non-existent inheritances, lottery wins, and stolen government cash from Nigeria. An alarming trend, uncovered by integrated messaging and web security specialists Messagelabs, is that 'phishing' emails which try to get hold of banking and other personal details are increasingly purporting to come from sources at trusted organisations like recruitment agencies. Onto the trend, many agency sites now slap a warning not to give away such information on the job specs they carry. Anti-malware specialists Sophos says these "spear-phishers" generate legitimate addresses by using lists of employees found on the networks of social media sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Sophos says spammers are moving to new targets, including mobile phones and social networking sites, where users are often more naïve, and ready to reveal plenty about themselves to complete strangers. According to the firm, the volume of spam rose markedly between April and June this year, to 96.5% of all business e-mail, meaning only one in 28 business emails is legitimate. The US leads as the main source of spam, followed by Russia, with a new entrant, Turkey, in third place. Contractors and others who work regularly in other people's premises may find it harder to access their personal emails, since many business now ban employees from accessing webmail accounts that haven't been scanned by corporate security systems. UK government departments, for example, now prevent staff from accessing Hotmail accounts – notoriously spam-prone - while at work. The level of spam distributed through sites like Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn is much smaller than traditional e-mail spam, but it is growing fast. "Spammers are finding themselves increasingly obstructed by corporate anti-spam defences at the email gateway," explained Sophos's senior technology consultant Graham Cluley. "We're stopping the bad guys getting their marketing message in front of their intended audience. To get around this, spammers are exploiting networks like Facebook to plant spam messages on other peoples' profiles - these don't just get read by the owner of the profile, but anyone else visiting his or her page." Earlier this year, users of the business networking site LinkedIn were offered a share of a $6.5 million inheritance: all they had to do was provide their banking details so that the money could be transferred. Although the "source" of the cash was supposed to be Cote d'Ivoire, this is a typical example of a "419" scam, named after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code. Sophos also found examples of text-message spam being used to generate denial-of-service attacks on corporate switchboards, by encouraging thousands of mobile phone users to call. Zoos in Ireland and Texas have been victims of these attacks. "As mobile operators give away more and more free texts per month and make available SMS web gateways that can be exploited by hackers, we may see more spammers using SMS to clog up phone lines," Sophos warned. Other kinds of spam are on the rise too. In San Francisco, of all places, people are apparently falling back on the much-derided pink luncheon meat as a cheap source of nourishment (a bargain at $2.62 for 12 ounces) as the financial crisis deepens. Spam chunks with eggs, Spam fried in rice and Spam fritters are all making regular appearances on San Francisco's dinner tables. Spam manufacturer Hormel Foods says Spam sales rose 10.6 percent in the 12 weeks to May 3rd this year – which, somewhat reassuringly, is actually faster than the rise in cyber-spam. Nick Langley Jul 21, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
| All content © Contractor UK Limited | [Register for News Letter] | [Privacy Statement] | [Terms of Use] | [Top of Page] |