Directory scam: Registration of the World Business Directory 2010/2011

MX Lab reported in 2009 about the misleading marketing trick that the World Business Directory uses. Guess what, they are back!
MX Lab received a new registration form from the World Business Directory and again, we want to point out a few things before you sign their contract.
The email comes from info@companyworld2010.com, with the subject “Registration [...]

ZBot trojan aims AIM users

MX Lab intercepted a few emails regarding AOL Instant Messenger accounts but in fact, the included URL leads to a web site that hosts malware. The malware is know as Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen (Kaspersky), PWS:Win32/Zbot.gen!R (Microsoft) or Trojan.Zbot!gen3 (Symantec).
The email comes from the spoofed address AIM <no_reply_instant_messenger@aol.com> with possible subjects like:
Your AIM account is flagged as inactive
Your AIM account [...]

SpamAssassin 2010 bug caused by “old” rule

SpamAssassin, a tool that is widely used as open-source anti spam detection system, had an issue on Janaury 1, 2010 with a rule that compares the date of an email message to detect emails from the future which could be an indicator of spam.
For the readers that are not familiar with SpamAssassin here is a [...]

Best wishes for 2010

We also would like to use the opportunity to thank all the readers of the MX Lab blog for their visits on our blog and the posted comments. We are commited to contribute further in email security related articles and we will also use Twitter to inform about email based threats and certain aspects of [...]

MX Lab on Twitter

Follow the MX Lab tweets on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mxlab/. Stay up to date with the latest news regarding email security in general.

Letter from Ondernemings-Portaal België

My company Pixel Design and MX Lab received today a letter from Ondernemings-Portaal België, in Dutch, regarding our presence on their business portal http://www.ondernemings-portaal-belgie.be or http://www.portail-des-entreprises-de-belgique.be/.
The way this company works is more or less similar to the World Business Guide or Belgisch Internet Register (DAD). Page one is the introduction letter and page two is the [...]

Make sure your WordPress installation is up to date

Maybe interesting reading for users who have their own WordPress installation older than version 2.8.4.
“The newly discovered worm is pretty sneaky to say the least. In a nutshell, it crawls the web looking for vulnerable WordPress installations, makes itself an administrator account, takes full control of the website and posts malware and spam to it. [...]

Shortened URLs: the real dangers behind and how to avoid troubles

URL-shortening services such as TinyURL and Bit.ly are popular when it comes down to shorten long URLs that have the possibility to break or are simply too long when inserted in email, posts on Twitter, blogs and so on.
The potential dangers and risks
The dark side is that with these shortening services you are no longer [...]

World Business Guide is using misleading marketing trick

Today, MX Lab received an email regarding the “World BusinessGuide” directory. At first there seems nothing wrong with the mailing but when looking further there are some points that need your attention.
The messages is from “World Business Register” with different email addresses in use:
info@easyhomecorporation.com
info@easycitycorporation.com
info@bigorganization4you.com
www@companyregpro.net
www@companyregstore.net
www@easycompregonline.com
www@bestcompregpro.com
The subject is “Business Registration 2009/2010″. The body of the email:
Ladies and [...]

Belgian court condemns 18 persons regarding Nigerean spam

The correctional court of Brugges, Belgium, condems 18 persons with prison sentences from 2 to 6 years for sending out fraudulent spam between Februay 2007 and November 2008.
In the Nigerian spam emails they claimed to have a fund in Ghana where a substantional amount of money was blocked after a woman died in a car accident. The small [...]