Spam news

A report by Kaspersky Labs confirms that the US continues to be the prime distributor of spam.

A report by AppRiver claims that most spam originates in Europe, although the US is still the single largest sender.

Apparent order confirmation messages from Amazon are actually spam, containing links to the site 'booksalon.kr', which may be a malware download site.

The Conficker worm spreads efficiently through vulnerabilities in several variants of Microsoft Windows. Recent versions have even moved from a command-and-control architecture to a peer-to-peer control system.

68% of ISPs say that outbound spam costs them up to $100,000 per year; another 4% say it costs them as much as $250,000, according to a new study by Osterman Research and Commtouch.

A small ISP named Asis has been slapped with an $807,000 fee for filing 'groundless claims' against advertiser Azoogle under the CAN-SPAM Act.

A U.S. judge has ordered the permanent closure of an ISP accused of hosting and distributing spam, spyware, child pornography and other illegal content. Judge Ronald Whyte ordered that assets owned by Pricewert, doing business as 3FN.net, be sold an that the company to turn over US$1.08 million in illegal profits.

A study by Phish Labs revealed that more than a thousand phishing sites were created by a single person in Nigeria over a 15-month period.

Google is investigating a growing number of reports that hackers are breaking into legitimate Gmail accounts and then using them to send spam messages.

Microsoft's action to take down the Waledac botnet has had little impact on spam volumes, according to leading security experts.

Microsoft has been granted a court order that will cut off 277 .com domains associated with the Waledac botnet, effectively shutting off access to the Waledac command-and-control servers.

A report from Websense indicates that 95% of user-generated posts on websites are spam or malicious, 71% of sites with malicious code are legitimate sites that have been compromised, and 81% of emails during the second half of 2009 contained a malicious link.

Three security researchers from FireEye have disabled the Mega-D botnet by taking down its command-and-control servers.

More than 1,000 websites that claim to sell cut-price designer goods have been shut down. The sites, which advertise brands including Ugg boots, Tiffany jewellery and Links of London, were removed by the Metropolitan Police.

As email filters get better at detecting spam, spammers are increasingly turning to other venues.