30 Days of Bots - SPAM from Corporate America...

FYI…

- http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix…ngly_becom.html
March 29, 2007 ~ "… The next time you receive a piece of junk e-mail touting penny stock, pimping Rolex watches, or lauding a work-at-home scam, consider investigating who really sent it. You may be surprised. Security Fix reviewed spam samples captured in the last month and found many instances of spam sent via computers at well-known Fortune 500 companies. Among the findings were:
– PayPal phishing scam e-mails coming from a machine at database software giant Oracle Corp.
– Penny stock spam being relayed by a PC inside American Electric Power. A stock spam for a company called NutriOne Corp. was generated from networks owned by computer maker Hewlett-Packard. Another stock scam from ExxonMobil touted shares of China Fruits Corp.x…
– Junk e-mail pushing knockoff prescription drugs, sent from a machine at IndyMac Bank. A message advertising similar goods was sent from a PC at Home Depot, and another from a computer at game company Electronic Arts. The EA machine is listed in Spamhaus.org's "Exploit Block List" (XBL), which flags Internet addresses showing signs of running spam relays, among other things.
– Spam advertising penile enhancement pills relayed through a Dow Jones network.
– Spam hawking costume jewelry and name-brand watches, relayed by a computer at Best Buy. This machine also is listed in the Spamhaus XBL list.

The junk e-mails listed above were gathered in traps set by Support Intelligence*, a data mining company based in San Francisco…"

* http://blog.support-intelligence.com/2007/…ys-of-bots.html
"30 Days of Bots - March 26, 2007…"

FYI…

- http://preview.tinyurl.com/ypfftn
April 17, 2007 ~ "Well-known enterprise companies are still having their IT systems hijacked by spammers despite investing in many different types of technologies aimed at stopping the problem. Last week, researchers at network security company Support Intelligence isolated an IP address within insurance giant Aflac that was being used by spammers to distribute mass amounts of e-mail messages… Over the course of a 24-hour period beginning on April 10, researchers at Support Intelligence and the SenderBase project estimated the volume of spam being distributed from the affected Web server, much of which included a pharming attack, jumped by more than 750 percent. Once informed of the problem, representatives at Aflac said they began work to shut down the rogue spam source, but researchers said that the incident further illustrates the problems that many enterprises are still facing in battling spam… While most large enterprises have made significant investments in anti-spam technologies, some fail to follow very basic recommendations for battling spam, such as blocking unauthorized e-mail from being sent out of their systems at their network gateways… Another problem is that the advanced malware programs being used to hijack PCs and set up spambots are frequently circumventing anti-virus systems and other security products…"

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