There are a plethora of online tools available, today, that make it extremely easy for an average Joe, to launch spamming campaigns, some of these campaigns, also employ phising, which involves identity theft.
Spamming, today, has been identified as the gateway, to other bigger cyber crimes, which are more serious and damaging, like phising and identity theft. More governments, around the globe, including the US Federal Government, are promising to bust these super spamming smooth operators and hi-fi suppliers of unwanted solicited emails. The task, kept before the governments of the world, is not going to be an easy one, with more and more tools, that allow, newbie teenagers, to spam mega multi billion dollar corporations, coming out on a daily basis. The FBI, played an active role, in the Federal Trade Commission Spam Summit, which was held earlier this week, by announcing that the bureau has been involved in seventy different, active, spam related crimes and investigation.
Some, of these investigations, are not just related to the federal government or the justice department, alone, some of them do cross international boundaries, requiring the help of the several international law enforcement agencies. The FBI, itself has worked with the Interpol, while investigating these threats.
In, another arena, the FBI, has been working with several, more than a dozen actually, international law enforcement agencies, in an operation, now known as - Operation Gold Phish, and up until now, they have unearthed, strong evidence that suggests that the operation could be headed for the malware economy. In One such case, the agencies, cracked down, on a cyber criminal dubbed as the infamous, "barracuda", who used to sell computer viruses, for $300, that could be included as spam attachments, and when opened by the unsuspecting user, would infect the user's computer, and later steal the identity information from the infected computer. Another case, also was bought in to the limelight. The case deals with a malware author named "Smash" , who used to sell Trojans, which could be used to control the infected computer remotely. The author's handiwork was found to be used by three Muslim terrorists, who were found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and incitement to commit terrorist's acts, and were sentenced, by a British court, to up to ten years.
Cases, like these and more, only go on to prove that, the supreme invention in the cyber headaches market, is also known as spamming, is a result of the availability of applications that make it extremely easy, for an average user to lunch industrial strength spamming campaigns, these people also are able to employ various phising techniques, that can steal our personal information. Some phisher's, like the infamous, "Mr. X", who is now in the federal lock ups, also hire or rent out scores of computers that are extremely capable of generating spam campaigns, of up to ten billion emails. Some others, rent botnets out for spamming.
This only reinforces the fact that, malware, spyware, adware and phising aren't going away anytime soon, and you will most definitely require the best spyware and malware protection out in the market, to guard against spams and other such malware carrying conduits.
