May 13, 2013
Barracuda Warns of Auto Wrap Scam
Barracuda Labs researchers say they've recently seen an increase in the volume of a long-running scam that leverages spam e-mails promising weekly payments in exchange for the right to wrap the recipient's car in an ad for a popular product such as Monster Energy Drink, Coca-Cola or Budweiser.
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May 9, 2013
Spammers finding favor with Google Translate
Some spammers, looking to launder the dirty links they email you, are relying on the positive reputation of Google Translate to redirect victims to rogue websites. Researchers at Barracuda Labs who maintain the company’s spam honeypots have spotted a rash of illicit messages trying to beat reputation filters by using this tactic.
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April 9, 2013
Can you buy Twitter legitimacy? A look inside the fake follower business
Barracuda Networks also conducted several studies about how these bots do their dirty work, and their research scientist Jason Ding told Digital Trends just how smart these follower services are becoming, citing a website called Fast Followerz as an especially sneaky new business. Ding explained the site’s savvy practice, noting it “allows customers to control the speed of followers to be added daily, with a monthly subscription. Meanwhile, they claimed that the followers’ quality is so good that they can be guaranteed to pass the ‘Fakers Test’ by StatusPeople. Hence, they can offer the ‘Followerz Protection’ five year warranty.This example will become a popular/standard trend for providing and consuming ‘fake’ accounts.”
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April 6, 2013
There Are 20 Million Fake Users On Twitter, And Twitter Can't Do Much About Them
The average price for 1,000 fake followers is $18, according to one study by Barracuda Labs. Mr. Stroppa and Mr. De Micheli said some sellers bragged that they made $2 and $30 per fake account. A conservative estimate, they said, was that fake Twitter followers offered potential for a $40 million to $360 million business.

... The most coveted fake accounts tweet (or retweet) constantly, have profile pictures and complete bios, and some even link to Web sites that they claim belong to them. But in many cases, a close look reveals that some of the accounts were set up purely to retweet material from specific sites.
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April 6, 2013
Spammers Misuse Google Translate for Evading Anti-spam Filters
According to security researchers from Barracuda Labs, spammers in their latest ruse are using Google Translate to elude anti-spam filters.

Dave Michmerhuizen, Research Scientist as well as Shawn Anderson, Engineer at Barracuda Labs draw attention to the fact that the majority of anti-spam filters are designed for preventing dubious e-mails whose embedded web-links lead to shaky destinations or reputations. However, to avoid this hazard, spammers are utilizing open domain diversions as also web-address condensers taking onto sites that high-status filters don't block, explain the experts.Threatpost.com published this in news on March 28, 2013.
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April 5, 2013
Fake Twitter Followers Become Multimillion-Dollar Business
Fake followers are typically sold in batches of one thousand to one million accounts. The average price for 1,000 fake followers is $18, according to one study by Barracuda Labs. Mr. Stroppa and Mr. De Micheli said some sellers bragged that they made $2 and $30 per fake account. A conservative estimate, they said, was that fake Twitter followers offered potential for a $40 million to $360 million business.
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April 3, 2013
Spammers Hide Behind Google Translate
Barracuda Labs researchers recently came across several spam campaigns that use Google Translate to make malicious links appear benign.

"A basic strategy for blocking spam that contains links is to consider the reputation and destination of the links found in the message," write Barracuda's Dave Michmerhuizen and Shawn Anderson. "Spammers fight back by looking for open URL redirectors and poorly maintained URL shorteners that they can hide behind."
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April 2, 2013
Merde! Dummkopf! Google Translate used as spam cloak
All sorts of internet pond life, particularly purveyors of blue pills purporting to pump blokes' performance between the sheets, are relying on the reputation of Google's language translation service to smuggle web links through mail filters. Security researchers at Barracuda Networks, which collects and analyses samples of spam, clocked messages attempting to defeat reputation filters using this tactic.
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April 2, 2013
Spammers dodge junk filters with Google Translate
The junkster tactic was discovered by Barracuda Labs after examining the messages from a variety of large-volume spam campaigns showing up in the company's honeypots.

The messages contain links that use Google Translate to hide the ultimate destination of the link -- typically a website hawking gray market pharmaceuticals.

Most targets of the spam will ignore it and the link when they receive it because of the obvious intent of its content. But as Barracuda noted in a blog post, "Someone must be clicking on them because these spammers show no signs of giving up."
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April 1, 2013
Spammers use Google Translate to Bypass Filters
Researchers at Barracuda Labs have detected a large amount of spam hitting inboxes, and after some research discovered why; someone discovered that Google is often whitelisted. That’s not the news though, because some of the more clever anti-spam products scan the message itself and rank the reputation of links inside – so Pharmaceutical spam, and other junk messages often fail to arrive.
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March 29, 2013
Spammers bypass spam filters with Google Translate links
Google Translate is the latest trick in spammers' arsenal for bypassing email spam filters, warn Barracuda Labs researchers.
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March 28, 2013
Spammers Turn To Google Translate To Evade Detection
The spammers are using the service as a URL redirect in an effort to avoid reputation and destination engines used in Web filters and other antispam technologies, according to Barracuda Networks, which recently detected spam campaigns using the technique in its spam honeypots. The Google Translate method is working because people are still clicking on the link, Barracuda said in a blog analyzing the spam campaign.
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March 22, 2013
BBC Twitter feed hijack possibly connected to phishing campaign
“The attacks on the BBC used another common form of attack, which includes using email addresses stolen from specific databases using ‘SQL injection’ to launch targeted spear-phishing attacks against email users,” commented Wieland Alge of security firm Barracuda Networks.
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February 19, 2013
5 Steps to Recovery After Your Business Has Been Hacked
“Nowadays, every company with an Internet connection is a potential victim. Hackers used to focus just on high-value organizations, like financial corporations, but now the tools are so efficient and cheap that hackers can afford to attack anyone and everyone around the clock,” said Dr. Paul Judge, vice president and Chief Research Officer of Barracuda Networks, which offers IT support and data protection services.
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February 12, 2013
Spammers Target Taxpayers Expecting Tax Refunds
If you browse through the headers, you get confirmation that this is a trick to get you to turn over your financial information – or to click through a series of links that likely contain malware or spyware which can be harmful to your computer and used to steal your identity. You’ll also find that the sender’s IP address is from Tehran, Iran, and it’s listed on the Realtime URI and Barracuda blacklists.
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