Spam Trends

[CityGuard]

Just came across an interesting new report on trends regarding spamming.

Some highlights:

Spam accounts for roughly 65% of all sent email.

MessageLabs puts the global ration of spam in September at 64.4 percent of sent messages, up 0.1 percent from August.

Gambling-related spam makes up 11% of all spam.

Other popular spam messages included pharmaceuticals (27 percent,) stock (18 percent,) sex enhancers (12 percent,) finance, work from home, mortgage, (11 percent,) gambling (11 percent,) pornography (6 percent,) and other at 15 percent.

Phising is on the rise, and now accounts for over 50% of "malicious emails" (not specifically defined in the article) that were intercepted by MessageLabs, which provided a lot of the data for the article. The biggest phising themes are eBay and PayPal, which each represent about 25% of the total phising messages intercepted. So, with the trend here, be careful of phising that looks like it is from with Neteller or other gambling payment processors -- we're likely to see a lot more of it.

If you have a deposit methods section on your site, it might be worth adding a cautionary note about phising scams there for your players. Wouldn't want one to fall for the scam after signing up for the payment processor through your site!

When judged as a proportion of all email-borne threats such as viruses and trojans, the number of phishing emails has risen by 21.7 percent, now accounting for 52.4 percent of all the malicious emails intercepted by MessageLabs.

Full article is available at:
http://www.thinkandask.com/2006/102806-spam.html

[pgaming]

Good post but would like to add a thing or two. On my external drive I have approx 1500 spam emails. All are malicious and open automatically in your inbox. When deleted they are sent directly to your host file if you are running Windows.

windows>system32>drivers>ect>hosts

This process provides the seed for a keylogger to be implemented. As big companies become more secure the malcious ones are reverting back to attacking individual P.C's . In this particular host file there should be nothing in there except a # when openned with notepad.

greek39

[kwblue]

Wow. That is some crazy ****. I'll have to do a little more search and find on my PC to make sure this is not the case. Keylogging is extremely dangerous as it leads to access to passwords and can be very damaging if you access an online bank account.

ugh.

[funboy]

"phishing emails has risen by 21.7 percent"

can you explain what this phrase means?

[CityGuard]

Hi funboy,

Phishing emails are messages that pretend to be from a trusted source and ask for personal information. The goal of them is to get bank account or credit card information, passwords, or other information needed to steal your identity. For example, a message might have the logo and appearance of a message from your bank and ask you to update your password, but when you click on a link from the message it takes you to a URL that is not actually your bank but asks you to enter your banking information (the page would typically appear to be identical to the bank's website).

[bb1web]

Hi Peter

windows>system32>drivers>ect>hosts

how do I open that? thru wordpad? sorry to be so dumb.

[kwblue]

wordpad, notepad, any text editor will do. It is a file without and extension, so you have to use 'open with...' and then select (I usually select) Notepad

[villa10]

By the way there is a software to avoid the keylogger attack.
It is a keyboard displayed in the screen, so there's no chance for the scamer to see passwords etc.

Perhaps some thech in the forum is aware about the manufacturer.

[universal4]

Interesting, but I was under the impression that most keyloggers work on the essence of capturing all key strokes before it is given to windows.

If the above is true, I would like to know more about how it works.

Basiclly, if you get a keylogger you need to get rid of it...anything short of that is not even an option IMO.

Rick
Universal4

[kwblue]

Keystrokes would still go through the operating system in all cases... that is even more so with USB keyboards which install drivers (which need the OS to run).

I am not quite sure how a program could stop keyloggers, though, since all they have to do is access the proper events (which have to occur for a keyboard to work). Even on-screen keyboards use functions called 'Send Keys' to send the information to different applications via handles.

But - with that said, that is just my rudimentary knowledge of the system. I can't figure out how it would even be possible to stop a key logger (besides trapping the exe and shutting it down).... The only way I know would to be to stop keystrokes makes the PC a bit useless, though

[villa10]

Here is the device xxxhttp://administracion.dattatec.com/clientes/login.php

It's a EU/Latinamerica Hosting Company.

You'll see a yellow box with a phrase which means "click here is you're using a public PC"

Click on the box and a keyboard will appear in the screen.
Then you can type your username/password etc .

[universal4]

I can not recommend anyone worried about keyloggers....passwords....bank info etc....to use a third party website to log in somewhere.

You have then allowed the third party website to capture the url, username and password....and this is what you have tried to protect.

Rick
Universal4

[villa10]

It is not a third party website.

In the link , the hosting company is using this device for their clients security only.
It is their own site.