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E-mail attachment malware soars 800 per cent in 3 months
Scary news as Halloween approaches: hackers visited the graveyard to resurrect this simple attack method from the dead. Computers caught in the attack will turn into zombies.10/28/2008 8:00:00 AM By: Brian Jackson
Attaching a virus to an e-mail and massively sending it out is a hacker attack that's been around almost as long as e-mail itself. The last quarter saw the highest levels of this activity since February, 2007. It's a dramatic rise in the amount of e-mail spam.
Sophos recommends that companies devise a way to automatically update corporate virus protection and run a security check at e-mail and Web gateways.
Mississauga, Ont.-based Jovian Technology Inc. has a similar approach with its e-mail server appliance. The company provides all the service and maintenance needed for the box, and the server also automatically upgrades its anti-virus protection engine from ClamAV.
"Everything is automatic out of the box," says Eric Wong, business development with Jovian. "All the intelligence is in the box itself."
He says the spam filter product automatically renames potentially dangerous e-mail attachments to prevent them from being launched too easily. For example, a .exe file will be renamed to a _exe file instead. That prevents it from being executed with a single double-click.
The U.S. is still the number one source for spam in the world, responsible for nearly one-fifth of all spam e-mail sent over the quarter, according to Sophos.
But Russia saw the greatest rise in spam messages sent. The amount of spam originating from Russia doubled to just over eight per cent.
Page Navigation 1) "It didn't use sex, it didn't use money, it used the buzz around the iPhone." – Page 12) "People continue to fall for the same tricks." – Page 2
3) The U.S. is the number one source for spam e-mail. – Page 3
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