In the Conflict Against Junk E-mail, the Human is the Most Exploitable Weakness

In the Conflict Against Junk E-mail, the Human is the Most Exploitable Weakness - By: Christopher Spence, Posted on: 2008-06-16

Deploying technologies such as antivirus protection, spam filtering, web proxies, and firewalls, corporations continuously try to protect information and data assets. Spammers continuously make it problematic by always updating and broadening the complexity, footprints, and immense amount of spam they transmit, so keeping pace with the latest security updates, exploits, and scams calls for nonstop effort. Many spam blockers are not able to keep up with the many forms of e-mail threats. A rising percentage of them are not containing a destructive payload (thereby avoiding e-mail security that depends on malware signatures), but instead try to lure users into clicking on websites which are cable of "drive-by" infections. A PC can become infected just by visiting a site. Promises of free music, cell tones, software, or images provide motivators to see these internet sites.

People are more attracted to the links, and more likely to click them, because they are being tempted by basic human traits by the attackers, like wanting to get something for free, curiousity, and even lust. This is because of an increased level of trust in protection services against viruses and other malware. Spammers and other creators of malware sometimes refer to this human component as "wetware," and are increasing the social engineering aspects of their assaults to take advantage of it. To combat this type of spam, companies have to combine the modern technology, including heuristic techniques, point of origin analysis, etc., with distinctly expressed and communicated policies for dealing with unsolicited commercial e-mail.

End users who are well-informed will help stop the security risked posed by "wetware". Attacking the human component of security by sending malicious e-mails is commonly called phishing. When the assailant has some fundamental information on the victim, these assaults are really targeted and efficient, these attacks are commonly called spear phishing.

Article Source:- Directory Submission & Sexy Deepika Padukone

Christopher is an Data Security Consultant for Lexan Systems L.L.C. and creator of MX Police the managed Spam Blocker. You are welcome to reproduce this article on your System Security related web site, as long as you reproduce the article in full, including this resource box and links to our websites.

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