Microsoft to Push Adoption of Sender ID at Email Summit

Microsoft Wednesday plans to promote adoption of the Sender ID email specification and introduce a new program for helping ISPs protect the integrity of email messages at the Email Authentication Summit in Chicago.

Citing research figures from MarkMonitor, Craig Spiezle, director of technology care and safety for Microsoft, said that Sender ID use among Fortune 500 companies has increased from 7% in July 2005 to 21%. About 32% of all e-mail sent is Sender ID compliant, added Spiezle, who plans to speak about the adoption of Sender ID at the summit.  more»

EU Trademark Officials Rejected Hormel's Spam Trademark

The producer of the canned pork product Spam has lost a bid to claim the word as a trademark for unsolicited e-mails. EU trademark officials rejected Hormel Foods Corp.'s appeal, dealing the company another setback in its struggle to prevent software companies from using the word "spam" in their products, a practice it argued was diluting its brand name. more»

Virginia Court Throws Out Spam Law; One Spammer Gets Away With It

The 2004 criminal spam case against large-scale spammer Jeremy Jaynes, which I've covered in several previous blog entries, appears to have come to an ignominious end with the state supreme court throwing out the law under which he was convicted. The Virginia anti-spam law was one of the first in the country with criminal provisions, but it failed due to the way that First Amendment cases are treated differently from all other cases. more»

Microsoft Opens Access to Its SenderID Spec

Microsoft has made the Sender ID framework specification for email authentication available to users at no cost and with the guarantee that it will never take legal action against them. more»

85 Billion Messages a Day, Spam Up 35% in November

Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters. ..."from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28. more»

Gmail Collaborate With eBay and PayPal to Fight Phishing

Google has recently announced that it has succeeded in working with eBay and PayPal, also owned by eBay, to fight phishing by using authentication standards DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). According to Google, this is the main tool used by Gamil to keep spam out of its inboxes. However, Brad Taylor, Google's Software said in a blog post, that "these systems can only be effective when high volume senders consistently use them to sign their mail -- if they're sending some mail without signatures, it's harder to tell whether it's phishing or not. Well, I'm happy to announce today that by working with eBay and PayPal, we're one step closer to stopping all phishing messages in their tracks." Google hopes this will set a good example for other organizations to follow suit and work towards making email trustworthy. more»

United Nations calls for ISPs to Police Spammers

The UN on Wednesday recommended enforceable codes of conduct for ISPs as a way to cut down on spam.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN organization responsible for global telecoms standards, recommended that ISPs be required to enforce codes of conduct regarding their customers, and block spammers' email access. more»

Peering into Fast Flux Botnet Activity

Together with Thorsten Holz, I recently published a paper on fast flux botnet behaviors, "As the Net Churns: Fast-Flux Botnet Observations," based on data we gathered in our ATLAS platform. Fast flux service networks utilize botnets to distribute the web servers to the infected PCs... One of the most well known fast flux botnets has been the Storm Worm botnet, which uses the zombies to spam, send out new enticements to infect users, and to host the malicious website which delivers the malcode. more»

Inside a Managed Spam Service

A managed spam vendor always has to raise the stakes during its introduction period on the market. But what happens when a market follower starts using the market leader's proprietary managed spamming system, and is able to provide better spamming rates at cheaper prices? Market forces and unethical competition at its best. more»

Spamhaus Agrees to Fight US Court Case

Spamhaus has switched legal tack and decide to appeal an $11.7m judgment against it by a US court obtained by a firm it labelled a spammer. ...In a default ruling made by a US court last month, Spamhaus was ordered to pay $11.7m in compensation to e360 Insight, pull the organisation's listing and post a notice stating that it was wrong to say e360 Insight was involved in sending junk mail. Spamhaus did not defend the case and the ruling was made in its absence. more»

Targeted Social Engineering Attacks Against Corporations Reach Record Levels

A recent report by iDefense Labs estimates that there have been 66 distinct spear phishing attacks between February 2007 and June 2008, with the rate of attacks continuing to accelerate. Spear phishing groups have claimed more than 15,000 corporate victims in 15 months, with victim losses exceeding $100,000 in some cases. Victims include Fortune 500 companies, financial institutions, government agencies, and legal firms. more»

Postage is Due for Companies Sending Email

Companies will soon have to buy the electronic equivalent of a postage stamp if they want to be certain that their e-mail will be delivered to many of their customers. America Online and Yahoo, two of the world's largest providers of e-mail accounts, are about to start using a controversial system that gives preferential treatment to messages from companies that pay from 1/4 of a cent to a penny each to have them delivered. The senders must contact only people who have agreed to receive their messages, or risk being blocked entirely. more»

US Warns of Fake Net Domain Data

More than 5% of the net's most popular domains have been registered using "patently false" data, research shows.

A US congressional report into who owns .com, .net and .org domains found that many owners were hiding their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. more»

Soloway Court Case Reveals the Sophisticated World of Online Fraud

Testimony received during the sentencing hearing for notorious spammer Robert Alan Soloway has offered an inside look at the big business of online fraud. Although anti-spam efforts implemented by ISPs have deterred many small-time spammers, sophisticated players remain active and they have developed tools to make their efforts easier. From the stand on Monday, investigators revealed some of the techniques that Soloway allegedly used to send out massive amounts of email. After the government seized Soloway's computer servers, investigators found files with as many as 10 million email addresses on each server along with Dark Mailer software on each server. more»

Why It Doesn't Matter That the Virginia Anti-Spam Law was Struck Down

If the headlines are to be believed, spam is now entirely legal in Virginia and anyone can send whatever they want without any fear of reprisal, ever. Looking beyond the headlines, it appears that the Virginia Supreme Court's ruling in AOL's case against formerly convicted spammer Jeremy Jaynes declares that the Virginia anti-spam law violates the Constitutional protection of anonymous speech, and thus is null and void. more»