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06-04-2004, 07:32 AM
<font size=4>Spam Gets Dangerous</font>
What isn't getting blocked is turning vicious, warn security experts at e-mail conference.
Dennis O'Reilly, PC World
Thursday, June 03, 2004
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA -- ISPs and spam filters are blocking record amounts of unsolicited messages, but this electronic nuisance is hardly on the decline--and it's getting nastier. Security experts report a growing link between spam and viruses, according to e-mail vendors and analysts at the inaugural INBOX: The Email Event conference here this week.
"You can't separate spam and viruses anymore," said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of e-mail security vendor MessageLabs. "Virtually all the viruses this year have to do with spam," he said, speaking at a conference session entitled "How Serious Is It? The Threats by the Numbers."
New Hazards
Sunner said two-thirds of global e-mail is spam, and roughly two-thirds of those messages are sent from open proxies. (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114528,00.asp) Open proxies are insecure systems that accept connections from any network address and thus serve as gateways for untraceable spam. Open proxies can also allow the placement of a kind of Trojan horse program called a "botnet" on your system without your knowledge. Thousands of these viruses can infect systems and be instructed to launch a denial-of-service attack on a Web site.
You can prevent most such worms by keeping your antivirus software up-to-date, but there's always a lag of several hours between the time a virus outbreak is detected and when antivirus vendors post a fix for it. "Because the antivirus industry is reactive, there's always a window of vulnerability," Sunner said.
The number of phishing attacks increased 180 percent from March to April this year, and the average monthly increase is 50 percent, according to Dave Jevans, senior vice president at e-mail security firm Tumbleweed Communications. Speaking at the same session, Jevans said "phishers" can rake in $100,000 per attack, and it can cost a company $30,000 to recover from such an attack. He also claimed 30 new phishing attacks occur every day.
More on this Story (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116387,00.asp)
What isn't getting blocked is turning vicious, warn security experts at e-mail conference.
Dennis O'Reilly, PC World
Thursday, June 03, 2004
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA -- ISPs and spam filters are blocking record amounts of unsolicited messages, but this electronic nuisance is hardly on the decline--and it's getting nastier. Security experts report a growing link between spam and viruses, according to e-mail vendors and analysts at the inaugural INBOX: The Email Event conference here this week.
"You can't separate spam and viruses anymore," said Mark Sunner, chief technology officer of e-mail security vendor MessageLabs. "Virtually all the viruses this year have to do with spam," he said, speaking at a conference session entitled "How Serious Is It? The Threats by the Numbers."
New Hazards
Sunner said two-thirds of global e-mail is spam, and roughly two-thirds of those messages are sent from open proxies. (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114528,00.asp) Open proxies are insecure systems that accept connections from any network address and thus serve as gateways for untraceable spam. Open proxies can also allow the placement of a kind of Trojan horse program called a "botnet" on your system without your knowledge. Thousands of these viruses can infect systems and be instructed to launch a denial-of-service attack on a Web site.
You can prevent most such worms by keeping your antivirus software up-to-date, but there's always a lag of several hours between the time a virus outbreak is detected and when antivirus vendors post a fix for it. "Because the antivirus industry is reactive, there's always a window of vulnerability," Sunner said.
The number of phishing attacks increased 180 percent from March to April this year, and the average monthly increase is 50 percent, according to Dave Jevans, senior vice president at e-mail security firm Tumbleweed Communications. Speaking at the same session, Jevans said "phishers" can rake in $100,000 per attack, and it can cost a company $30,000 to recover from such an attack. He also claimed 30 new phishing attacks occur every day.
More on this Story (http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116387,00.asp)