Security Response: Showing posts tagged with Endpoint Protection (AntiVirus): Showing posts by Eric Park

Here’s some news! Starting from this month, we will be combining the monthly State of Spam and State of Phishing reports into one: State of Spam & Phishing Report.

This month’s report carries detailed articles on what spammers have been up to with the recent Haiti earthquake tragedy, as well as the upcoming Valentine’s Day. Both include tips for users to avoid becoming victims of spam. For these articles and much more, download the February 2010 State of Spam & Phishing Report, which highlights the following trends:

•    No Sympathy From Spammers
•    Spam Calendar of Events
•    CNNIC Clamps Down
•    Will the Trend Continue?
•    January 2010: Spam Subject Line Analysis...

With the soaring popularity of social networking sites, it is no surprise that spammers try to take advantage of them. In the past, spammers would register their own accounts and then send unsolicited messages through the social networking site. By default, the site generated automated email to let the user know that there is a new message. While such notifications are technically legitimate, the user would have most likely considered the messages as spam, due to the unsolicited content. For spammers, this technique had a shortcoming—the message sent to the user was from an unknown person/entity.

Recently, Symantec has observed a rise in a newer technique of social networking site abuse. The below example is a legitimate notification from Facebook that informs the user of a new private message:

As noted above, the message itself is not spam because...

A typical phishing email message tries to represent (falsely) a single institution. For example, a spammer sends a phishing message, forging the email to appear as if it’s from a financial institution. The recipient is then asked to enter personal information for some fictional reason (for example, “verify your identity”). In an effort to obtain as much information as possible about the unsuspecting user, the spammer usually asks for more information than what is asked at a legitimate website. While a legitimate site may only ask for username and password, a phishing site usually seeks additional information such as a credit card or pin number, mother’s maiden name, and/or a social security number. Once the user hits the “submit” button, the private information is sent into the hands of criminals.

Symantec has recently observed a spam message that is pretending to be from HM Revenue & Customs in the United Kingdom. The message is very...