Symantec Publishes August 2011 Symantec Intelligence Report

Combining the best research and analysis from the Symantec (News - Alert).cloud MessageLabs Intelligence Report and the Symantec State of Spam & Phishing Report, Symantec has released Symantec Intelligence Report.

The report offers the latest analysis of cyber security threats, trends and insights from the Symantec Intelligence team and also focuses on how spammers are trying to cash in on the fluctuations in the stock market.

Spammers promote certain stocks in order to inflate the price as much as possible so that they may then be sold before their valuation crashes back to reality in a pump-and-dump stock scam. The spam for these scams tries to convince the prospective mark that the penny stock is actually worth more than its valuation, or that it will soon skyrocket. Needless to say, most of these claims are either false or misleading.

“Scammers can make substantial profits in a matter of days with a well-executed pump-and-dump spam.   In the current turbulent environment many people may be convinced to invest in stocks that the scammers claim will benefit from the market turbulence,” said Paul Wood, senior intelligence analyst, Symantec cloud. “MBR infections offer great scope for deep infection and control of computers, which makes the idea attractive to malware creators.”

Artificially driving up the price, a successful pump-and-dump spam campaign raises the stock to a point where the scammers decide to sell their shares. Helping to drive its valuation back to the original low price, this usually coincides with them ending the spam campaign, which in turn reduces the interest in the stock, the company stated in a press release.

Recently, the company introduced Enterprise Vault 10, the new version of its email and content archiving software that now features Symantec's data loss prevention technology to analyze Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange email content and metadata to help determine the archiving and retention strategy for all messages. With this, email content and metadata are automatically classified and assigned the appropriate archiving and retention policy, and can even be flagged to be reviewed for compliance reasons.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.