Spam

Corporate spambots named and shamed

Fortune 500 companies under the spotlight

Written by Iain Thomson

A San Francisco network security company has started a campaign to name and shame corporate networks which host Trojan-infected PCs that send spam.

Support Intelligence has found infected PCs in many of the top companies in the world, including 3M, Toshiba, Bank of America, Borders and ClearChannel.

"We have been collecting data on the top 500 networks in Fortune 1000 companies evaluating how much spam or unsolicited commercial email they send," said the company. "We will continue this coverage until corporate America is clean."

Support Intelligence suggested that it will achieve this by 2012.

The data has highlighted some very poor security systems, even in technology companies.

Toshiba was singled out for particular criticism. Support Intelligence claimed that one of Toshiba's servers has been spewing out share ramping spam and bogus financial offers for over nine months.

By contrast, Borders suffered an infection and sorted it out within four days, and financial services company Charles Schwab was cleared of sending out any spam at all from its servers.

Support Intelligence will be naming companies on its blog for the next three weeks, showing IP addresses to prove its point.

Tags:

Further reading

Americans retain spam crown

Nine in 20 junk emails sent from US computers   More...

Spam hits record high in February

SoftScan calls for tougher legal penalties   More...

Pump-and-dump spam using subliminal signals

'Buy!' message embedded in share scams   More...

Spam levels reach record high

Image spam and phishing attacks predominate   More...

Related articles

vnunet.com comment: Bill Gates powers down

A reflection on the highs and lows of Gates's Microsoft   More...

Underworld economy runs on bots and spam

Market for hijacked PCs fuels online crime   More...

Boffins find way to fight spam scams

94 per cent of spam-advertised online scams are hosted on individual web servers   More...

McAfee publishes spam test results

Volunteers report back on inbox assault   More...

Do you agree?

Advertisement

Job of the week

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Hiring now on ComputingCareers:

Related IT jobs

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Advertisement

Watch

24 Jul 2008

3.68 MBSpammer jailed, Esquire e-cover, and network passwords More...

23 Jul 2008

2.99 MBSmall time security, official 'spying' requests and a spammer jail break More...

22 Jul 2008

3.22 MBSat-nav crashes, open source security and female gamers More...

Poll

EUROPEAN E-COMMERCE

EUROPEAN E-COMMERCE

Are you happy making an online purchase from another European country?

Previous poll results

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Enter email address to edit your newsletter preferences

Spotlight

Credit card transaction

Credit card fraud rampant in the UK

Attempted frauds go unreported and ignored, analysts claim   More...

Intel

Intel rolls out new embedded line-up

System-on-a-chip offerings promise footprint and power saving   More...

Advertisement

Network cables

Tech giants collaborate on wireless HD

Another attempt at cable-free transmission in the home   More...

iPhone fever fills AT&T coffers

US provider cashes in on Apple smartphone   More...

Advertisement