Information Protection and Security

That isn't surprising. Spam traffic has hovered in the 83 to 86 percent range for about a year. What is alarming is that spam-based malware traffic -- i.e., malware that "piggybacks" on top of (or is otherwise linked to via) spam messages -- increased dramatically last month, surging by 900 percent between August and September. At one point in September, Symantec reports, malware accounted for almost 5 percent of all spam traffic.

Be on the lookout for suspicious tweets like these and don't follow links indiscriminately.
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The industry-wide phishing scam that has affected popular web mail services such as Hotmail and GMail, is spreading, according to experts.

Security researcher Roger Thompson, of AVG Technologies, today said his company in recent days discovered numerous Facebook pages that were clearly created in an automated fashion using malware programs. The pages are being used to spam links pointing to malicious sites. Users who click on the link are prompted to install rogue anti-spyware tools on their systems, he said.

In the early days of botnets, size was the main measure of the threat. But as the malicious networks become more sophisticated, researchers say, the biggest networks aren't always the worst offenders.
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DG News Service - Criminals are waging a nasty online campaign right now, hoping that their victims' fears of the tax collecter will lead them to inadvertently install malicious software.
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For the third year in a row, McAfee has published its blacklist of celebrity names – those names most likely to be exploited by spammers, malicious attackers, unscrupulous Web site designers, and others who front-load search engines with popular keywords. Unsuspecting users who initiate searches using these names click a link and are catapulted into malware.
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Health care was the most common category for spam in August. An increasing number of bogus pharmacies are using image spam, in which the message is included in an image rather in text in an effort to avoid spam filters.
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Microsoft pointed to e-mail account "hijacking" as becoming an increasing problem, especially among Windows Live Hotmail users. 

The White House on Monday implemented several new changes to its Web site, apparently aimed at reducing the number of people who receive unsolicited e-mails from the administration and at battling charges that it's collecting personal information on critics. 
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