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http://www.3news.co....75/Default.aspx
Quote
aug 13 2010
There’s a growing trend down under of unwanted emails being sent from personal email accounts.
Often spam is sent from a bogus email address, but the number of real accounts being compromised is on the increase.
Last night, someone in china logged into my personal email account and sent this to everyone in my address book.
“Last week, I have ordered china product Apple iPad 64GB
This website: *********
I've received the item today, it’s amazing!”
I wasn't in China, and I don't own an Ipad. But like lots of other kiwis I've had my email account hijacked to send spam.
Tim Nixon is another victim of spam.
“It all happened really fast, I got a few emails and texts saying "have you changed your profession?" and surely enough there was access from china,” he says.
Netsafe spokesman Martin Cocker says this surge in spam is relatively new.
“There seems to be a trend in using stolen email accounts for advertising, that’s quite recent,” he says.
Mr Cocker says the spammers rely on people trusting emails they get from friends, even if the English is questionable.
“You've always been able to spoof someone’s email, but in this case people are accessing accounts so they can send emails to that persons friends,” he says.
Mark Piper is an IT security consultant in Wellington and says the last 2 weeks have seen a large rise in Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail violations.
“Yeah well we think this information has been gathered through virus's over the last year and just now software has logged into all these accounts and attacked,” he says.
He adds that personal email accounts are now a logical target for hackers.
“There’s lots of info in email accounts for a start, so people store lots of stuff that’s important to them. They’re also used to reset other passwords, so [they are] useful for information like that,” he says.
Most hackers rely on people being naive or stupid; just consider the 5 most popular passwords of all time:
123456, password, 12345678, 1234 and pussy.
There’s a growing trend down under of unwanted emails being sent from personal email accounts.
Often spam is sent from a bogus email address, but the number of real accounts being compromised is on the increase.
Last night, someone in china logged into my personal email account and sent this to everyone in my address book.
“Last week, I have ordered china product Apple iPad 64GB
This website: *********
I've received the item today, it’s amazing!”
I wasn't in China, and I don't own an Ipad. But like lots of other kiwis I've had my email account hijacked to send spam.
Tim Nixon is another victim of spam.
“It all happened really fast, I got a few emails and texts saying "have you changed your profession?" and surely enough there was access from china,” he says.
Netsafe spokesman Martin Cocker says this surge in spam is relatively new.
“There seems to be a trend in using stolen email accounts for advertising, that’s quite recent,” he says.
Mr Cocker says the spammers rely on people trusting emails they get from friends, even if the English is questionable.
“You've always been able to spoof someone’s email, but in this case people are accessing accounts so they can send emails to that persons friends,” he says.
Mark Piper is an IT security consultant in Wellington and says the last 2 weeks have seen a large rise in Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail violations.
“Yeah well we think this information has been gathered through virus's over the last year and just now software has logged into all these accounts and attacked,” he says.
He adds that personal email accounts are now a logical target for hackers.
“There’s lots of info in email accounts for a start, so people store lots of stuff that’s important to them. They’re also used to reset other passwords, so [they are] useful for information like that,” he says.
Most hackers rely on people being naive or stupid; just consider the 5 most popular passwords of all time:
123456, password, 12345678, 1234 and pussy.
Edited by zalternate, 15 August 2010 - 06:29 PM.
