Another security problem

I had hoped to move away from security blogging this week and focus on some other issues. But today I see that both CAUCE and John Levine are reporting that there is malware spam coming from a Cheetahmail customer.
Looking at what they shared, it may be that Cheetahmail has not been compromised directly. Given mail is only coming from one /29, which belongs to one customer it is possible that only the single customer account has been compromised. If that is the case, then it’s most likely one of the Cheetahmail users at the customer got infected and their Cheetahmail credentials were stolen. The spammer then gained access to the customer’s Cheetahmail account.  It’s even possible that the spammer used the compromised customer account to launch the mail. If this is the case, the spammer looked exactly like the customer, so most normal controls wouldn’t have noticed this was a spammer.
This highlights the multiple vectors these criminals are using to gain access to ESPs and the mailing systems they use. They’re not just trying to compromise the ESPs, but they’re also attempting to compromise customers and access their accounts so that the spammer can steal the ESPs hard won and hard fought sending reputation.
Everyone sending mail should be taking a long, hard look at their security. Just because you’re not an ESP doesn’t mean you aren’t a target or that you can get away with lax security. You are also a target.

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Light blogging for a while

Sorry for the lack of substantive posts, things seem to have gone completely out of control and I’m not finding a lot of extra cycles to sit down and blog. I’ll try and get some stuff up this week, but I’m also getting ready for MAAWG and the sessions I’m a part of there.
There was an interesting post by Romer over on his personal blog. If you don’t know, Romer helps maintain one of the commercial mail filters. He recently got spammed by one of his vendors and talked about how this is probably not the best idea. Al adds his own take on companies assuming permission. I’ve talked about taking permission in the past but haven’t touched on things like “spamming the guy who runs the filter.”
You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t, about how many people who run filters for large organizations get spammed regularly. You wouldn’t be surprised to find out that those people do factor in their own personal spam load when adjusting their organizational filters.

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Spammers and the law

Robert Soloway, one of the people crowned with the title “Spam King”, has been released from jail. He was an extremely prolific spammer, generating over 10 trillion messages over the course of his career.
As Mr. Soloway exits jail, another spammer heads to serve his 20 year sentence. Peter Maxson Anyanyueze sent Nigerian 419 spams telling people they could profit from helping him move money around. The scam is that the victim needs to pay small amounts of money, sometimes totalling tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Security, security, security

James Hoddinott posts, over on the Cloudmark blog, about another arrest associated with hackers infecting machines with a trojan that steals personal information.
There are so many security risks out there, and these messages have been hammered home recently. Home users are at risk from trojans, some spread by spam and some spread by advertising networks. Corporate users are at risk from all of those, but also from spear phishers who set out to infiltrate their business.
We all need to think hard about security. Not just keeping our Windows machines patched, but also thinking about what information we’re sharing and what passwords we’re using and all of the many things that create security.
We’re making some improvements to our security here. What are you doing at home and at work to keep your information, and your customer’s information, secure?

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