Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A spam email attack claiming that Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, is homosexual has been identified by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham(UAB).
It would appear that online spammers are now using the conflict in the European country as a way of circumventing virus detection software on PCs, Vnunet.com has reported.
A mass-spam attack was detected when the file was opened which resulted in more than 500 emails in a 90-minute period.
Gary Warner, director of computer forensics research at UAB, said: "The danger is that almost no antivirus products detected this virus when it began to be distributed this morning."
He went on to report that just four out of 36 anti-virus products which were tested revealed the suspicious file.
In other news, network security analyst Gadi Evron wrote in his blog that the recent web attacks against Georgian military website were most probably the work of rogue nationalists rather than criminal gangs as was previously believed.
Related News:
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Hackers spamming from legit accounts - 10.27.2008
Hackers have begun spamming users from legitimate email accounts, making the automated tracking and blocking of this kind of email filtering more difficult, it has been claimed.
Commerce customers in Kansas targeted - 10.23.2008
Customers with Commerce Bank have been warned that they may be targeted by an email phishing scam which attempts to trick them into handing over sensitive account information.
ISPs need better web filters - 9.5.2008
Internet service providers (ISPs) need to do more to protect clients from botnets and other security threats by improving antivirus protection and web filters, it has been claimed.
