Commtouch Café

Malware keeps Michael Jackson’s legacy alive

2009-07-01T15:25:07Z

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, the big news is that Michael Jackson died. Yes…THAT Michael Jackson. The King of Pop. The Thriller. The one who introduced the world to the Moonwalk and a solitary glittery glove. In the wake of his untimely death, cyber criminals have used his [...]

Rise in Number of New Email-borne Viruses Not Caught by Major AV Engines

2009-06-30T14:30:44Z

From late May through June, Commtouch Labs noted a sharp rise in the number of new viruses being circulated via email that were not caught by the major anti-virus engines. A new Malware Report released by the company details several outbreaks whose wide distribution caused malware numbers to temporarily and exponentially increase from the rather [...]

Pharmacy spreads the virus, rather than cure

2009-06-24T14:31:58Z

It seems the summer holiday has cleared the way for spammers to spend more time focusing on what they do best…clogging our inboxes and trying to trick users and filters alike. Analysts in the Commtouch Lab recently found an interesting example that demonstrates the lengths to which spammers will go to trick us, and I [...]

Is Raymond Marcus buying your domains too?

2009-06-08T13:21:42Z

Peter Wang is really worried about the Commtouch domain. He sent us the very official-looking email seen below (complete with spelling and grammar mistakes) warning us that some guy “named ‘raymond marcus’ wanted to applied for the Internet brand ‘commtouch’ and some domain names through” their body. I’m not even really sure what that means. Raymond [...]

Spam slips through Gmail filters

2009-06-03T15:06:58Z

Gmail users have been treated to a fairly strong track record of spamless inboxes thanks to Gmail’s filtering methods. Every now and then, maybe they’d miss one…or maybe they’d falsely mark a legitimate email as spam…but for the most part, Gmail users have been spared large amounts of spam cluttering their inboxes. Over the last four [...]

Never tempt an Argentinean with FIFA World Cup tickets…

2009-06-02T14:05:57Z

What else can be said about those pesky Nigerian scam emails (commonly known as the “419 fraud”) and notifications of winning large amounts of money that hasn’t already been said? It isn’t new that scammers use current events, news and upcoming attractions to make their campaigns seem authentic and convincing. While doing some research on 419 [...]

A few Words about the Commtouch Milter

2009-05-27T12:37:39Z

What is a Milter? Sendmail and Postfix are the most popular open-source mail transfer agent (MTA); Sendmail has both free and commercial editions. Due to the emergence of threats and unwanted content such as viruses and spam, a need arose to filter those messages closer to the perimeter, before they reach the end-user mailbox; however, since both [...]

Mail merge FAIL

2009-05-12T12:42:32Z

You know how it is when you need a vacation. You’re tired and cranky. You daydream. You can’t focus. You confuse things. I think that is what happened with a recent batch of spam reported on by the Commtouch Labs. A few samples looked something like this: The image is missing and the text is an HTML [...]

Swine Flu Infects Inboxes too

2009-05-06T12:53:44Z

As the Swine Flu makes its way around the world and creates panic among travelers, spammers have tried to cash in on the frenzy. The Commtouch Labs recently reported on two different kinds of spam attacks that have incorporated the phrase “Swine Flu” as a means of social engineering — Swine Flu is such a [...]

Commtouch Unveils New Online Security Center

2009-04-21T13:41:38Z

We are happy to announce the availability of a new Online Security Center, featuring timely data and statistics regarding malware outbreaks, and other messaging and Web threats. A new feature we developed, is a Web Security Lab that identifies the top categories of Web sites infected with malware or manipulated by phishing. The comprehensive Security Center includes [...]