Latest Email Hacks and Security Breaches
Digital attacks that originate over email are very common.
In fact, since the beginning of widespread email services, viruses have been a
part of their overall threat to computer security. Symantec, one of the largest
manufacturers of security technology on the planet, recently released a report
in which they detailed some of the most common threats that have been going
around in recent months.
The Worm
Look at any hacked email account and you'll usually find
some sort of a worm involved in it. The end of the summer of 2011 saw the
advent of the W32.Sality.AE worm, which is really just the worm of the moment.
Most unauthorized email access originates with a viral attachment. The virus is
quite often a worm in the worm is designed to unleash a destructive payload
upon the server or the network where it is opened. While W32.Sality.AE might be
the latest thing to threaten computers, it is most certainly not the first and
it will not be the last.
According to the report, most of the phishing activity done
over email was targeted at businesses in the public sector. Phishing is an
activity where you use a spoofed email or a spoofed webpage to get somebody's
credentials from them without their knowing. Generally, the spoofed email or
webpage appears as something official and asks someone to enter sensitive
information, such as their PayPal account information, their banking account
information and so forth.
Social Engineering
Do an email lookup for attachments in your folder and you'll
find plenty of them. In fact, you'll find emails with all types of viruses
attached to them, in all likelihood. Most of the time, your antivirus software
will pick up the viruses and quarantine them so that all that remains is a
dummy. One of the most vicious types of attacks, however, is social
engineering. According to the same report, social engineering comprised many of
the attacks that were successfully launched over the summer.
The aforementioned phishing is a form of social engineering.
Oftentimes, hacked email accounts are opened up because somebody gave their
credentials to the hacker without knowing it. One of the more clever ways that
hackers figured out how to do this over the summer was to use office machinery
to send phony requests for password credentials. They would use, for example,
the company printer to send an attachment asking for email account information
or other information that can be used to hack email. Once the unsuspecting
victim sent it, their email account was completely open and usable by the
hacker.
Sometimes, hacked emails are hacked over email itself. Spam emails
that contain some sort of scam were big threats over the end of the summer
2011. These emails usually have some sort of appeal to pity or an appeal to
social consciousness and ask people to donate money or take some other action
that compromises their security. Increasingly common are webpages that are
linked to from the email that contain malware embedded in their code.
Dangerous Pages
Oftentimes, hacked email accounts and spam emails are used
to direct people to webpages that have dangerous software embedded in them.
Symantec, in its 2011 intelligence report laid the blame for quite a few of the
successful hacks at the feet of JavaScript. JavaScript is actually a very
useful technology that is used on webpages all over the Internet. It can be
used for malicious purposes, however, and it can be used to hack email.
If you want an idea of how someone could access your account
and send unauthorized email from it by using a JavaScript exploit, do an email
lookup for any email that looks like a webpage. You probably get some of these
from online discounters or other retail outlets. If somebody wanted to hack
your email, they could send you one of these emails with a webpage embedded in
it that was hidden by JavaScript. The easiest way to avoid having this happen
to you is to use security software that disables JavaScript in emails.
According to the report, Symantec discovered well over 3,000
websites every day that where being used to hide malicious software. This
number went up from August to September of 2011.
There were some good news items in the Symantec intelligence
report. For starters, the overall level of spam went down. Spam is one of the
most annoying types of unauthorized email that users receive. While it is
annoying in its most common form, when it is simply an advertisement, it is
downright dangerous and other forms. It is quite frequently used as a vector
for viruses and other malicious software. According to the report, the global
ratio of spam to legitimate email went down by 1.1 percentage points compared
to last month.
Other Threats
Hacked email accounts are oftentimes used to send spam
messages that contain infections that make computers part of a botnet.
Microsoft and U.S. government agencies shut down a couple of these botnets over
the summer of 2011 that had posed serious threats to Internet security. Some of
the malicious software used to make computers members of these botnets was sent
from bogus email addresses or was sent from hacked email addresses. Hacked email
addresses are always major threats and, in many cases, the individual who has
the hacked email address doesn't even know that their email is being used to
send out malicious software.
Overall, unauthorized emails or emails that were
deliberately sent with viruses attached to them accounted for one in 225
emails, according to the report. Some industries are more subject being spammed
than others. For example, the automotive industry had the highest rate of spam.
Stopping unauthorized email use is always a priority. Many of the problems
reported in the intelligence report no doubt originated with hacked email
accounts that their owners probably didn't even know were compromised. Installing
antivirus software and using an email service that filters emails for spam and
other nuisance messages is the best way to make certain that you do not end up
being infected by hacked emails or that you do not receive a constant stream of
unauthorized emails.