[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Spam and Phishing
“This may be the most well known form of computer breaching, and
yet it is still the healthiest and fastest growing of attacks. In
2004, Bill Gates predicted that spam would be resolved in another
two years. In 2008, we were seeing spam levels at 76 percent until
the McColo incident in November 2008, at which time spam levels
dropped 65 percent. The battle with spammers has turned into an all
out war and spammers are showing no sign of surrendering.“Spammers take advantage of current events, such as the
presidential election, Chinese earthquake, Beijing Olympic Games
and the economy. They use these widely socialized issues as
headlines to lure people into clicking on a link to malware or
sending money for unrealistic charitable campaigns. Social networks
are only feeding the beast by making it easier for spam attacks to
propagate quickly through a victim’s social network.”