Click to Play CES: Keep Your Info Secure with... Data Locker is known for supplying the world’s most secure portable hard drives. Their secure drives are designed to give you a sense of relief in the event that... Top Security News Lessons Learned From Virgin’s Glaring Vulnerability A customer-facing vulnerability at Virgin Mobile's website could have allowed anyone with knowledge of another person's mobile number to make account changes. Fannie Mae Learns Luck Isn’t Good IT Oversight A "logic bomb" set to go off this past weekend by a terminated Fannie Mae employee sent shockwaves through the security industry, bringing up the inevitable... Fannie Mae Contractor Indicted For Planting Malicious... Wouldn't it have been fun, after all of Fannie Mae's other woes, their entire IT system-consisting of 4,000 servers, just up and crashed? Had it not been for a chance... Friday:02.05.09 AppRiver says January saw a 120% increase in total email traffic. Of nine million messages, over 97 percent were spam or carried a virus, according to the company's Threat and Scamscape Report for February. Most spam in January, the vast majority, originated in Europe (34%) and Asia (27%), with a large increase from South America (19%). It's possible the McColo takedown severely lessened the amount of spam originating from North America (12%). Brazil, actually, became the spammiest nation on Earth last month, tripling previous levels and taking the USA's spot as the world's top spammer. Not because the Ukraine didn't try-despite a 930% year-over-year increase and roughly 150 million spam messages, the former Soviet republic managed to make only the top eight. After Brazil, USA, India, China, Russia, Turkey, Columbia, Ukraine, Korea, and Poland round out the world's most spammy nations in January. Join the Mosso Hosting Cloud. Easy. Powerful. Scalable. Learn More Methods used by spammers have gotten more sophisticated. Spoofing has become popular as scammers try to trick recipients into thinking the email is from a recognized authority source. AppRiver says they've intercepted spoofs appearing to be from Men's Health magazine, Omaha Steaks, Microsoft, Food Network, and the IRS. Many carried attachments or graphical links to Canadian pharmacies. The Conficker worm-aka Downadup, Kido-continues to be the malware to watch. Conficker should have been reasonably contained by a patch issued by Microsoft in November closing up a vulnerability in Windows Server Service RPC. Those who did not install the patch are still vulnerable to this sophisticated worm that has already spread to at least 5 million PCs, mostly in countries other than the US and UK. The reigning theory behind Conficker's spread in countries like China, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Taiwan, and India is the prevalence of pirated Windows operating systems where the automatic update features have been turned off for fear of detection. This month, Waledac is the worm waiting to swallow up everything. The reincarnation of Storm, this botnet has picked up where it left off during the US Election and Christmas season by sending out Valentines and the unromantic kind of Trojans. About the Author: Jason is a graduate of the University of Kentucky. He covers business, technology, and security issues. SecurityProNews is brought to you by: SecurityConfig.com NetworkingFiles.com ITmanagementNews.com NetworkNewz.com DatabaseProNews.com SQLProNews.com ITcertificationNews.com SysAdminNews.com LinuxProNews.com WirelessProNews.com About SecurityProNews SecurityProNews is updated in real time with vital internet security alerts, news and in-depth articles for IT Managers. SecurityProNews understands that IT Management Begins With Security. Advertising Newsletters Corporate Info Site Map Support © 2009 SecurityProNews. An email newsletter. , Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509 All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy policy. Contact us. SecurityProNews is part of the iEntry Inc. Network of sites and newsletters.