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Insights on Data Security & Threat Intelligence

Using Google cache and invisible text for spam redirect

This title of this email caught our eye – “privacy” – certainly an amusing way to introduce spam. Closer inspection revealed two interesting tricks, no doubt intended to fool content-based spam filters.  The first is the use of almost invisible, random text to break up words which might be detected

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What is security?

The theoretical answer to that question is quite complex but involves a definition like this: “Protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information”. This is a nice definition that ends up conveying a significant amount of information without meaning much at all.  I am a pragmatist: I need to model

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Not a “Halmark” Greetings Card

Since this is my second post on the Commtouch blog I have added a brief intro – I have been working in the antivirus industry since 2004. I’ve served as an Escalation Anti-Virus Engineer at Trend Micro, Inc., a Senior Anti-Malware Analyst at F-Secure, Inc., and currently work as a

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Give thanks for anti-spam this Thanksgiving

Yes – you should give thanks for anti-spam since it would have prevented you from receiving all sorts of unwanted emails. Like these horrid marketing scams. This group of spammers needs recipients to respond before Thanksgiving in order to claim government grants. The email titles take the email address names

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Pacquiao-Margarito Fight KOs users with Fake AV

November 13, 2011, Saturday – The world will once again witness two of world boxing’s greatest fighters trading punches in the ring to see who’s the toughest and who will be win the WBC Super Welterweight World Title. For those of you who are not boxing aficionados, more info about

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Using unicode to trick users to install malware

Our partner Openfind Information Technology, Inc., providing message communication, security and assurance solutions and based in Taiwan, have detected increased use of a new technique used to trick users into opening malware executables. The files are distributed via email (compressed). The emails includes standard “you have received an important document

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Sillyspam Websites

First there was Sillyspam (search Twitter for #sillyspam) – where we tweet about amusing spam topics and content that we have seen. Then we added “Silly 419” – describing some of the more outlandish attempted fraud emails that we pick up in our labs. And now we add “Sillyspam Websites”.

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