Braving the spam storm

A relatively new breed of botnet, spawned by the Storm worm, is proving to be quite a challenge in the spam game.

According to Enterprise IT Planet, this new malware contributed to a slight uptick in spam lately as reported by MessageLabs. Under the control of Russian spammer Zliden, this Storm-based botnet is a massive beast - and sophisticated too.

For instance, image and PDF generation engines make sure no two e-mails remain exactly the same for long. Graphical elements are randomised and letters are arranged in a "seemingly" haphazard manner (while remaining strangely legible) to throw off even the most expensive anti-spam filter.

Spam is no longer only an e-mail concern, as uSwitch has found more and more unsolicited "spam" messages are being sent to mobile phone handsets, says UK Press.

In the UK, there are more than a million unwanted texts received by phone owners every day, that either try to directly sell a product or service, or encourage the recipient to contact a company for more information.

This may be causing more annoyance than anything else at present, but as mobile phones increasingly mirror their personal computer counterparts, it is only a matter of time before we receive virus-ridden text messages.

September marked a particularly spam-abundant month, and anti-virus vendors are blaming students, says PC Pro.

Spam rose by 39% from August to September, which is trend that is becoming worryingly regular.

According to Softscan, every year around September the number soars, but it goes up and stays up.

Referring to them as 'spam zombies', Softscan reckons that learners' machines are infected before they get back to their campuses, then they get a high-speed connection and spread lots of spam without realising it.

The spam count in September went as high as 98% of e-mail volume on some days.

As mobile phones increasingly mirror their personal computer counterparts, it is only a matter of time before we receive virus-ridden text messages.

Ilva Pieterse, ITWeb contributor

Biometric systems are causing a stir in some British schools, according to The Register.

Several schools, it seems, are holding back dinner from kids who refuse to have their fingerprints scanned.

The Department for Education and Skills said this week that schools that refused dinners to kids who won't scan their fingerprints might be in breach of the law.

The department said: "Schools have a legal duty to provide meals for pupils who want them. So telling concerned parents to provide packed lunches if they were unwilling to sign up to the fingerprint system, as Morley High was doing, might amount to a breach of the Education Act 2002."

Apparently, the benefits of this fingerprint 'dinner queue' system are that children can be processed through the lunch queue more efficiently and cost-effectively, and that children who get free school meals can evade stigmatisation.

Microsoft is set to release four critical security patches for October's security update, explains Search Security.

The patches will be used for Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word. Less critical updates will affect Windows, SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

A series of Medion laptops installed with Vista, numbering anywhere up to 100 000 shipments, was discovered to be infected by a 13-year-old boot sector virus, according to The Register.

Known as Stoned.Angelina, this virus moved the original master boot record to cylinder 0, head 0, sector 9.

Although the infection itself is harmless, Stoned.Angelina has certainly caused embarrassment among Microsoft and Bullguard executives after flaws in their software allowed the virus to slip through.