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Desktop Security
security advisory vulnerability
security advisory vulnerability GNOME is officially shortening its standard vulnerability disclosure window from 90 days to 30 days, a change that impacts upstream maintainers, downstream Linux distributions, and system administrators in how they handle software vulnerabilities. The policy shift, announced by long-time security coordinator Michael Catanzaro , addresses modern software patching realities and a growing influx of automated submissions. . Because GNOME is the default desktop environment on several major Linux...
Jul 21, 2026
Security Vulnerabilities security advisory moderate
security advisory moderate For organizations that run a self-hosted Git platform, it’s no longer just about hosting static code repositories. Today, Git servers are responsible for deployment pipelines, API tokens, SSH keys, package repositories, and the automation scripts that push code directly. Confirm that the upgrade addresses known vulnerabilities but also provides production environments. . That makes them trusted systems within the development environment and attractive targets for attackers looking to move...
Jul 20, 2026
Server Securitydata privacy automation
data privacy automation Every system admin has lived through the same Monday morning ritual. A queue of forty tickets, half of them password resets, permission errors, or disk space warnings that any experienced technician could resolve in under two minutes. The other half require actual judgment. For years, automation promised that software would eventually sort the two apart on its own. That promise is now being tested in production Linux environments. . Early results are reshaping how IT teams think about tier-1...
Jul 17, 2026
Privacydata collection automation
data collection automation You're running a web scraping project to collect pricing data from e-commerce sites. You set up a pool of datacenter proxies, launch your scripts, and within minutes — banned . CAPTCHAs everywhere. Your data pipeline stops before it really begins. . It's a frustrating scenario that plays out daily in ad verification, market research, and multi-account management. The website doesn't know you're doing legitimate research or monitoring. It just sees traffic coming from IP ranges it recognizes as...
Jul 17, 2026
Security Trends security advisory social engineering
security advisory social engineering Business Email Compromise used to be a numbers game — mass-blasted emails, broken English, an obvious "URGENT WIRE TRANSFER" subject line. That era is over. Generative AI has turned BEC into a tailored, low-noise operation that mimics writing style, voice, and even video presence. This piece looks at what's actually changed under the hood, what defenders are testing in response, and why so many organizations are still structurally unprepared for it. . The Infrastructure Problem Nobody Wants to...
Jul 17, 2026
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81
anti-spamemail threatsspamExponential Spam Growth and Economic Effects Impacting Email 2002
The growth of the spam problem in 2002 has been exponential. Companies that sell spam filtering software say currently the percentage of email that is spam could be 20%, 33%, or even up to 50%, compared to less than 10% a year ago. While the rise in spam is easy to notice, it is hard to quantify. Spam is by definition "unsolicited commercial email", and often. . . . The growth of the spam problem in 2002 has been exponential. Companies that sell spam filtering software say currently the percentage of email that is spam could be 20%, 33%, or even up to 50%, compared to less than 10% a year ago. While the rise in spam is easy to notice, it is hard to quantify. Spam is by definition "unsolicited commercial email", and often spamees cannot remember signing up to have their email addresses added to lists, or were not aware they were doing so. BrightMail Inc, the market leader in anti-spam services, says emails sent to its honey-pot email addresses are by definition unsolicited, and that it has seen spam on its customers' networks increase from 8% of mail to 41% of mail in the last 14 months. Wasting time deleting UCE can be a productivity concern for enterprises. A survey by SurfControl Plc said 25% of enterprise email is spam and that each message costs up to a dollar. CloudMark Inc said 10 spams per day could cost a company $86 per employee per year. Even if getting spam was free, there's a general consensus it's still annoying enough to want to filter. But why has it become so much of a problem this year? We asked executives from companies that provide anti-spam software and services to explain. "Now anyone can do it," said Pavni Divanji, CEO of MailFrontier Inc. "The process is so streamlined. You can buy a CD of email addresses, buy mailing software, find an open relay and start doing it. People think it's easy and that they can make a few dollars off it." The economics of spam are attractive for both the spammers and the companies that pay them to spam, particularly given the macroeconomy in the US. Email marketing has low response rates, typically less than half a percent, but is very, very cheap. Growing numbers of e-businesses can't blow $50m of IPO money on TV and direct mail campaigns any more, and all the people they laid off into a depressed job market are looking for new sources of income. Enrique Salem, CEO of BrightMail, said he talked to a spammer last week who was paid $1,500 to send one million spams. Even with a response rate of just one tenth of a percent, that's 1,000 likely customers reached for $1.50 a head. For the spammer, the cost was negligible. "A lot of the Chinese, Korean and Latin American spam originates in the US ... People are looking at alternate ways to make money. It's a way to augment their income," said Salem. "Companies are looking at alternative ways to market and reach customers." It's also exceptionally easy to get started as a spammer. CDs of 150 million email addresses can be bought for as little as $100 online. Web sites maintain lists of open email relays, many in Asia, which can be used to push mail through. "The social stigma has gone," said MailFrontier's Divanji. "People don't think twice about doing it." This point is debatable. While spammers think as long as no laws are broken they are not doing anything wrong, recent published interviews with spammers tell stories of harassment from irate spamees, both online and off. But, just as finding people who respond to spam is a numbers game, finding people who have no ethical qualms with eating the bandwidth of millions of people and giving them headaches every morning should be easy. "If this trend continues unchecked, it's going to make email unusable," said Salem. . The growth of spam in 2002 shows a significant rise impacting companies and email users alike, leading to productivity concerns.. spam growth, email threats, spam filtering, economic impact. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Nov 03, 2023
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Privacy
74
malwarecyber threatbotnetWaledac Botnet Launches New Spam Campaigns Targeting Pharmaceuticals
An old threat has reappeared in the new year, researchers said this week. According to a blog by researchers at Websense, the Waledac botnet appeared in a new version in the last days of 2010, sending out large amounts of new year-related spam messages.. It then stopped spamming in the evening of Jan. 4. On Tuesday morning a new variant of Waledac was distributed to members of the botnet, according to Websense. "On Wednesday, it started spamming again, but now it's back to sending pharmaceutical spam promoting 'the magic blue pill,' which we have seen previous versions of Waledac do in the past." As in previous spam campaigns, the spammers are using redirections via compromised legitimate sites, the researchers say. The link for this article located at Dark Reading is no longer available. . Elkran cybercriminal network reemerges with updated spam strategies, advertising usual medications while leveraging hijacked platforms.. Waledac Botnet, Malware Threat, Spam Campaigns, Cybersecurity Updates. . Alex
Jan 19, 2011
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Network Security
79
security advisorymalwarethreat mitigationSymantec Report Highlights Surge in Shortened URL Spam and Risks
Symantec has released the July 2010 MessageLabs Intelligence Report which contains the usual interesting and relevant facts regarding trends in spam and malware. Of particular interest in this report, though, is the fact that attacks exploiting shortened URLs have skyrocketed, and that a new approach is needed to protect against the rising threat.. A Symantec spokesperson clarified the shortened URL issue in an e-mail, stating that the MessageLab report "reveals that the percentage of spam using shortened URLs has increased in the last year, from 9.3% to 18% of all spam at its peak. The average volume of spam containing shortened URLs has also increased, with this type of spam appearing in more 0.5% of spam on 43 days in the past four months." Sending URLs in email or instant messaging communications has always been problematic. Some URLs are excessively long--resulting in a bunch of gibberish in the message, and end up broken--rendering them useless for the recipient anyway unless the user wants to manually copy and paste or type in the part of the URL that got cut off. The link for this article located at IT World is no longer available. . The surge of compact hyperlinks in junk mail underscores the urgency for improved safety protocols given the escalating risks of malicious software.. Shortened URLs, Spam Trends, Malware Protection, Security Measures. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jul 26, 2010
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Security Projects
83
malwaresecurity technologiesspamSpammers and Botnets Adapt With Disposable Domains for Evasion
Spammers and the botnet operators they're allied with are continuing to adapt their techniques to evade security technologies, and now are using what amount to disposable domains for their activities. A new report shows that the spammers are buying dozens of domains at a time and moving from one to another as often as several times a day to prevent shutdowns.. Spammers for years have been buying domains in bulk and using them for both redirections to other, often malicious, sites and for locations to set up quick e-commerce sites for sales of pills, pirated software, fake watches or whatever goods they're pushing that day. Anti-spam services and email filters typically use static lists of known malicious domains or ones known to be used by spammers. That approach worked well early on in the fight against spam, but as the spammers have analyzed the defenses deployed against them, their tactics have become much more devious and effective of late. New research by security firm M86 Security Labs shows that the amount of time that a spammer uses a given domain is basically a day or less. The company looked at 60 days worth of data from their customers and found that more than 70 percent of the domains used by spammers are active for a day or less. The link for this article located at ThreatPost is no longer available. . Spammers for years have been buying domains in bulk and using them for both redirections to other, o. spammers, botnet, operators, they're, allied, continuing, adapt, their, techniques. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Jul 15, 2010
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Hacks/Cracks
78
malwaresecurity analysisSymantecEvaluating Symantec's Linux Spam Claims Against Windows Systems
The latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report from Symantec Hosted Services is filled with interesting and useful information regarding the current state of malware and e-mail borne threats as well as the trends over time. Of particular interest to me is the assertion in the report that "any given Linux machine is five times more likely to be sending spam than any given Windows machine.". I am generally one of the first to point out that the security risks associated with the Windows operating system are often exaggerated, or at least that the relative threat level is a function of market share, and that if Linux or Mac OS X had 90 percent market share those systems would be at least as vulnerable, and at least as targeted by malicious attack as Windows is now. That said, saying that Linux is five times more likely to distribute spam than Windows seemed like skewed math for the sake of sensationalism. I checked with other malware security experts to gather some additional insight on the issue of Linux as a purveyor of spam. What I found was a consensus regarding the root cause behind the metrics, and ultimately that Linux may, in fact, be an inordinate source of spam messages. Tyler Reguly, lead research engineer for nCircle, told me "I actually find the report rather odd, and also question their methods for remote fingerprinting. If they were using passive fingerprinting on mail coming into their server, they wouldn't necessarily have an accurate fingerprint of the host sending the mail. They could instead be fingerprinting a mail server with an open relay, or an ISP "smarthost". They also acknowledged that much of the Linux attributed spam could be coming from direct marketing emails... these would most likely be mailed out through a proper mail server (which is quite likely to be running Linux)." The link for this article located at PC World is no longer available. . I am generally one of the first to point out that the security risks associated with the Windows ope. latest, messagelabs, intelligence,report, symantec, hosted, services, filled, interesting. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
May 07, 2010
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Vendors/Products
77
networkingLinuxsecurity analysisLinux Systems Responsible For 5.14% Of Global Spam Contribution
I don't think this finding is unexpected at all. After all, Linux certainly operates better on the network, and sending spam email is no different than sending other types of email, or operating a web server. Whichever operation you're performing, choosing the best implementation for the job is a wise decision. Although Linux holds only a small market share, Linux computers appear to send a disproportionate amount of spam compared to other operating systems, according to new research from Symantec's MessageLabs messaging security division. . Symantec looked at spam from November 2009 through March and broke down what kind of operating system is on the computer that sent the spam. Analysts do that by a method called passive fingerprinting, which involves analyzing the network traffic of a remote host, which reveals that host's operating system. Since Windows holds more than 90 percent of the market, the lion's share of spam still comes from Windows machines, said Paul Wood, a MessageLabs intelligence analyst with Symantec. Symantec found that 92.65 percent of spam came from Windows PCs, with 2.22 percent coming from other operating systems and nearly none from Apple computers. But 5.14 percent of spam came from Linux machines, which is somewhat odd since Linux comprises about 1.03 percent of the operating system market, according to statistics quoted by Symantec in its latest MessageLabs Intelligence report for April. The link for this article located at PC World is no longer available. . Research reveals Linux systems produce more spam emails than anticipated despite their small market presence.. Linux Systems, Spam Analysis, Network Insights. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Apr 27, 2010
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Server Security
74
malwaresecurity insightsemail filteringGoogle: Botnets Generate Increased Spam Volume In 2023 Q1
Botnets cranked out more spam and larger individual files containing spam in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest report from Postini, Google's e-mail filtering and security service.. Despite the best efforts of security software developers and the mostly successful efforts to neutralize especially destructive botnets, such as Mariposa, Zeus and Waledac, Google's data centers reported a 30 percent increase in the size of individual spam messages at the end of March. "This recent spate of botnet takedowns has not had a dramatic impact on spam levels," Gopal Shah, a member of Google's Postini services team, wrote in a blog posting. "Although spam and virus levels did fall below Q409 highs, reports from Google's global analytics show that spam levels held relatively steady over the course" of the first quarter, he added. The link for this article located at eSecurity Planet is no longer available. . Despite efforts to mitigate their impact, botnets persist in producing significant spam traffic. Explore findings from the latest report by Google.. Botnet Activity, Email Spam, Security Insights, Postini Report, Malware Trends. . Anthony Pell
Apr 16, 2010
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Network Security
83
threat analysismalwaresecurity researchMalware Attacks From Unexpected Geolocations: A Global Analysis
The countries of hackers originating malware-laced spam runs have been exposed by new research, which confirms they are often located thousands of miles away from the compromised systems they use to send out junk mail.. A third of targeted malware attacks sent so far in March came from the United States (36.6 per cent), based on mail server location. However, after the sender's actual location is analysed, more targeted attacks actually began in China (28.2 per cent) and Romania (21.1 per cent) than the US (13.8 percent), according to the March 2010 edition of the monthly MessageLabs security report. Paul Wood, MessageLabs intelligence senior analyst, explained the discrepancy: The link for this article located at The Register UK is no longer available. . Studies indicate that the majority of cyber intrusion attempts originate from unanticipated nations, highlighting the geographic locations of cybercriminals.. Malware Analysis, Cybersecurity Threats, Spam Origins, Targeted Attacks, Hacker Geolocation. . LinuxSecurity.com Team
Mar 26, 2010
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Hacks/Cracks
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