WHY YOUR INBOX HAS MORE MALICIOUS SPAM.
What comes to mind when you think about spam? Miracle pills from digital doctors and Internet pharmacies that guarantee to grow your hair and other things? How about chain emails like the one that promised you a portion of Bill Gates’ fortune if you forwarded the email to your friends? What about the ubiquitous advertisements for XXX, hardest of the hardcore adult video sites? Or do you hear the word “Spam” and think, what’s for lunch? Emotet, the world’s most costly and destructive botnet, returned from a five-month hiatus on Friday with a blast of malicious spam aimed at spreading a backdoor that installs ransomware, bank-fraud trojans, and other nasty malware. The botnet sent a hefty 250,000 messages during the day, mostly to people in the United States and the United Kingdom, Sherrod DeGrippo, senior director of threat research and detection at security firm Proofpoint, told Ars. Other researchers said targets were also located in the Middle East, South America, and Africa. The bot...