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Insights on Data Security & Threat Intelligence

Email malware levels skyrocket

Earlier this week we described a huge malware outbreak with increases of over 500%. The graph we presented showed a tapering off after the peak of the attack. The similar attacks in March and April also showed this trend – with a large initial outbreak followed by gradually decreasing spikes

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“exe” read backwards spells “malware”

RIGHT TO LEFT OVERRIDE (RLO) is a unicode control character (U+202E) that reverses the character reading order from the traditional left-to-right, to right-to-left. This is mainly used for right-to-left languages (such as Arabic or Hebrew). We reported this trick last year but it has resurfaced extensively in the past week

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A wild malware rollercoaster – over 500% increase

The UPS name is once again being used to spread vast amounts of email-attached malware. The last week has seen an extraordinary increase – over 5.5 times the average level before the outbreak. The attack closely resembles the large outbreak reported on at the end of March. There are numerous

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Dating spam moves with the times

“Dating spam” – that’s what we call it. I mean, on the surface that’s what these emails seem to be offering. Last year we described the return to ASCII-art spam that promoted dating sites.  Of course spammers and the products that they promote must move with the times. So, as

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Russian brides worried by improved Baltic brides

Russian brides can no longer sit complacently and wait for potential husbands. There is now competition on the (Western) horizon. Baltic brides are waiting and there are several important advantages as pointed out in the spam email below:  EUROPEAN PASSPORTs – All our Baltic Brides have European Union residence. No

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This week’s Facebook and Twitter abuse

Spam and malware distribution is a business. So if something works then don’t change it. We speculate that these attacks work since our labs have seen them repeated almost unchanged for months now. (See this post about Twitter spam and this post about twitter spam). The recipe for success when

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Feminists just wanna have fun (and send spam)

As a feminist who sees an above-average amount of spam (due to many years in the Internet security space), the spam sample below caught my eye and elicited a chuckle.  It’s dating spam with sense of humor: the spammer sent a “looking for sex on the side” spam message with

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Free hosting for malware

Malware distributors are abusing the names of well known security suites to trick users into downloading malicious files. The email message informs recipients that they may have been infected with a worm requiring them to download and run a scanning tool.  Google translation: Your e-mailcan be blocked byinappropriate use.Attention: We

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