The Mega-D botnet has overtaken Storm Worm as the world’s biggest purveyor of spam, according to Marshal. This news highlights the lax security on some social applications and networking sites - something you can help us defeat!
The Mega-D botnet has surpassed the infamous Storm Worm as the world’s largest source of spam, according to IT security company Marshal. Mega-D, which promotes male sexual enhancement pills such as Herbal King and VPXL, uses emails to trick people into installing the spam product. It now accounts for 32 per cent of all spam, Secure Computing reports.
It also uses news headlines to get people to open the spam, even using the recent death of Australian actor Heath Ledger as a hook. This tactic is similar to that used by the Storm Worm. “[Mega-D] probably started about four months ago and it’s been steadily increasing since then,” said Marshal’s Bradley Anstis.
“It is possible that the individuals behind the Storm botnet are responsible for one or more of these other botnets.” He added that Microsoft had done a good job with its malicious software removal tool that has helped to tackle the Storm Worm. Given the widespread nature of Microsoft’s software and their increasing acquisitions on the internet, it’s nice to see they’ve upped their game and their anti-malware is effective.
Meanwhile, it emerged last month that spam purveyor Sanford Wallace had made $555,000 through a scam on MySpace that pushed users through to porn and gambling sites controlled by Wallace.
While we realise Microsoft aren’t everyone’s favourite firm, compared to the likes of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, at least they take their security seriously. For the benefit of all the online community, it’s totally worth fighting for better security on third party social applications and social networking sites or going white hat to help application developers to fix loopholes.
If you want to continue to enjoy the internet safe in the knowledge that your privacy isn’t being violated then we really need to encourage companies like Microsoft in this regard and rally round with initiatives like Stopbadware.org.
So how do we fight this together?
We’re just asking you to blog, talk, post on forums, write emails, ‘soft spam’ Facebook by getting all of your friends to set the same status – anything to raise awareness of the lack of privacy present on some social networks and to make it secure. In the words of the great Jerry Springer: “Take care of yourself, and each other.”
