Posts tagged attacks
Security Predictions for 2011
Dec 17th
On December 7, we released our MessageLabs Intelligence 2010 Annual Security Report which highlighted the changes in the threat landscape during 2010 and looked ahead to potential trends for 2011. This blog is a snap shot of some of the trends and predictions noted in the report.
Global Spam Trends
In 2011, spam will become more culturally and linguistically diverse. The use of English in spam will fall from approximately 95 per cent of all spam to below 90 per cent driven by economic growth and broadband adoption in emerging economies. For instance, spammers will target Brazil with more than 40 percent of spam in Portuguese. Portuguese and Spanish will become some of the most popular languages used in spam other than English.
How cyber crooks break CAPTCHAs
Aug 11th
The per centage of spam containing shortened hyperlinks has increased significantly over the last year. As far as spammers are concerned, any tactic that makes it harder to block their spam emails is going to be exploited. These shortened hyperlinks contain reputable and legitimate domains, making it harder for traditional anti-spam filters to identify the messages as spam.
Paul Wood
Analysis in the latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report revealed that URL-shortened spam hit a one day peak of 18 per cent, or 23.4 billion spam emails, on April 30, 2010. This doubled last year’s peak level of 9.3 per cent of spam, or more than 10 billion spam emails, on July 28, 2009.
While botnets are often the source of short URL spam, 28 per cent of this type of spam originated from sources not linked to a known botnet, such as unidentified spam-sending botnets or non-botnet sources such as webmail accounts created using CAPTCHA-breaking tools.
Targeted malware attacks increase around G8 and G20 summits
Jun 24th
Most well-publicized events have accompanying spam runs, like the death of a famous person or large sporting events. Most of you will have seen a news-related e-mail at some point that turned out to be just another spam message trying to sell you a replica watch.
However, some events, though very well-publicized, don’t generate the same kind of rush in the spammers’ world probably because they believe their target audience would not be very interested in the topic, and so would be less likely to fall for any related scams.
Examples of this type of event are the semi-annual G20 summit and the annual G8 summit. These events seem to be of little interest to general spammers. We have not seen any of the usual types of spam referencing it in any way. But even though they are not exploited in the same way as an event like the World Cup, they still do not escape the notice of cyber criminals. Read the rest of this entry »
Is Google really fed up with censorship and spying in China?
Jan 13th
Google’s very thinly veiled intimations of pulling out of the world’s largest Internet market highlights the issue of industrial espionage that trouble’s many foreign firms doing business in China.
The search engine giant would conceivably employ the most sophisticated security systems to protect its network. But if the king of the Web is crying it can’t take the heat anymore where does that leave smaller organizations?
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The decade of convergence and the (n)ever-changing risk landscape
Jan 6th
A full decade after convergence was hailed as the next big thing, right around the turn of the millennium; this elusive concept is making a comeback. The difference is that we now have a massive infrastructure, a vast audience, and the will to make contact. Indeed 10 years ago, the potential of the Internet to connect people and deliver efficiencies was identified, but the model was unproven and not enough adopters meant an uphill battle for every XML developer, every PDA manufacturer and for eCommerce sites in general. 
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