![]() When a Google user enters a term into the firm's search engine, the ad belonging to the advertiser that bid the highest price for that search term appears at the top of the list of search results. Sponsored links allow customers to buy advertisements attached to a particular search term. ![]() They are aiming to get their malicious software installed on computers whose users click onto ad links after searching for legitimate sites such as, the official Web site of the Better Business Bureau. "The whole end game is building a bigger, better botnet," he said."Īp~ "Virus writers have been gaming Google's "sponsored links" - the paid ads shown alongside search engine results*. Paul Henry, VP of technology evangelism with Secure Computing, said in an interview that this latest Storm attack was aimed at building out the hackers' botnet. The fact that infected computers connect through a peer-to-peer system and not to a standalone server or even a node makes it extremely hard to shut down. It also can download additional malware onto the infected system. If a user opens the file, his machine is infected with the malware and it then connects to a peer-to-peer network where it can upload data, including personal information from the infected computer. Encrypting the malicious code makes it much more difficult for anti-virus programs to catch it, and if they can't catch it, they can't stop it. That all changed on Friday morning when the attack went quiet. ![]() Today's flood is ten times as large as one this past Sunday, which also involved the virulent Storm Worm."Īp~ ".The Internet Storm Center reported detecting at least 20,000 infections, while the Security Response Team at Symantec said they received several hundred thousand reports of the malicious e-mail making the rounds. Cloudmark, another e-mail security company, says it sees similar outbreak numbers. The latest batch attempts to fool readers-with subjects like "Worm Alert!" or "Virus Alert!"-into thinking they are already infected and need to apply a supplied patch-an attached virus. The first e-mails had romance-themed subjects: "A kiss so gentle," or "I dream of you," for instance. The zip file appears to be named:Īp03:00 PM PDT ~ ".Postini*, an e-mail security company, says that over the last 24 hours it has seen about 55 million virus e-mails, about 60 times the daily average. It has two attachments, one being an image with 'panic-worded text', and the other is a password protected zip file, whose password is revealed in the image. (Version: 10) ~ ".The Subject of the email (that we have seen so far) say: JumpStart's FreeFlixTix site is now offline." The spam scam also misled consumers who took the bait and went to FreeFlixTix, with some of the "free" ticket offers requiring credit card registration that in many cases resulted in charges made to the account. JumpStart, charged the FTC, collected e-mail addresses by offering free movie tickets to consumers in exchange for ratting out the names and e-mail addresses of five or more friends. has spammed consumers since 2002, sending millions of messages disguised as personal e-mails in an attempt to hype its FreeFlixTix Web site. According to a complaint filed by the FTC, JumpStart Technologies of San Francisco, Calif. "The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday nailed a spammer with a record-setting $900,000 fine for violating the CAN-SPAM Act. If you really want them to visit the site, just send them the URL yourself in an e-mail: Easily can happen when a visitor to ANY site enters the "names and e-mail addresses of.friends.".
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