Published: Tuesday 3rd November, 2009 | Author: Sylvie Barak
Companies: Microsoft (All Microsoft content), McAfee (All McAfee content)
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email to a friendThere may be nothing friendly and sociable about hackers, but according to reports by both McAfee and Microsoft, the online scammers are spending more and more time cracking into social networks using phishing ploys, worms and Trojans.
Microsoft's security trend report - covering the first half of this year - noted a significant spike in phishing attacks in May and June 2009, which it reckons was caused by a number of hacking campaigns targeting social-networking sites during those months.
Unsurprisingly, banking sites, e-tailer sites, and online gaming sites were also ripe targets for attack, with Trojans still representing the most widespread method in the hackers' arsenal.
Worms, however, also managed to wiggle their way up from fifth place in the security risk stakes in H208 to second place in 1H09. Microsoft blames this on both the infectious Conficker and Taterf worms which spread rapidly through massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) in the latter half of the year.
In its report, Microsoft also boasts that it managed to not only detect, but also wipe out a plethora of "rogue security software" from some from 13.4 million computers during the first half of 2009, with the number of "total unique vulnerability disclosures" across the industry down significantly compared to this time last year.
Browser vulnerabilities increased a bit, but OS security holes apparently remained unchanged. Having said that, Microsoft did point out that infection rates for Windows Vista were a fair bit lower than for Windows XP, while the rate for Windows Server 2008 was also considerably less than Server 2003.
Meanwhile, McAfee's report fingered the U.S. as the number one spam distributor and the country with the most compromised "zombie" computers used in botnets to splutter out spam. It also has the dubious honour of being the country with the most servers hosting malware. China and Brazil followed in close second and third place.
McAfee also posited that 92 per cent of all e-mail sent out was actually Spam, a 24 per cent leap from last year.
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It's not that sort of spam that's the problem - don't get any of that. It's all the leaflet crap the postman drops through the door regardless of whether you've actually got real post or not. Everytime I'm checking my post, I do so standing by the recycle bag - it's amazing how quickly if fills up. Don't appreciate having my time wasted filtering it all.
Waste of time having a word with whomever's delivering as their faces change too often. A "no junk mail" note on the door doesn't work either.
(Sorry for OT rant)Quote
Making people pay to send mail was arguably the best anti-spam tactic that worked for postage, we need the same thing for email.
Really? Not the case in my experience, as above, it hasn't stopped Dominos/Lidl/Dear Random Homeowner/etc :angst:Quote
@Perfectionist
It's not that sort of spam that's the problem - don't get any of that. It's all the leaflet crap the postman drops through the door regardless of whether you've actually got real post or not. Everytime I'm checking my post, I do so standing by the recycle bag - it's amazing how quickly if fills up. Don't appreciate having my time wasted filtering it all.
Waste of time having a word with whomever's delivering as their faces change too often. A "no junk mail" note on the door doesn't work either.
(Sorry for OT rant)
Did you read the first link I posted after the email? Or any of them, cos it seems you just saw a link thought "nono" and replied ;)
That's called "royal mail door to door", the direct marketing scumbags actually pay royal mail to deliver them (and royal mail accepts, I don't think they used to do this but it seems a result of commercialising the national post), if you get off the ones delivered by the postman will stop. If you get leaflets after that, call the takeaway, mention that you are receiving junk mailfrom them and ask for your address (not name) to be taken off their list citing the data protection act - they tell the pikeys on bikes not to drop their wads of leaflets over there anymore, at least in my experience.Quote
Did you read the first link I posted after the email? Or any of them, cos it seems you just saw a link thought "nono" and replied ;)
Sorry, guilty as charged. Immediately thought that was related to addressed mail :embarrassed:
Just hope it works - reading their FAQ it seems Royal Mail have a tendancy to ignore requests.Quote
Really? Not the case in my experience, as above, it hasn't stopped Dominos/Lidl/Dear Random Homeowner/etc :angst:
I only said best, not 100% cure. But going by numbers, I get a lot more spam from freely posted sources than paid for mail.Quote
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