Two New Compromises

Friday, May 12. 2006
Our honeypots at RWTH Aachen university remain rather active. We had again two compromises and in both incidents we observed phishing groups. The attacker compromised the machines with the help of exploits against web applications. It seems that web applications are currently one of the easiest ways to 0wn a network...

The analysis of both incidents is not ready yet, but I will post an update once I have more details. In addition, our CWSandbox is currently in beta test, so expect a public webinterface in the near future :)
Posted by Thorsten Holz in honeynets at 21:02 | Comments (-61) | Trackbacks (51)

Automated Malware Classification

Tuesday, May 2. 2006
Halvar has a very interesting blog entry about automated malware classification and naming. Awesome work and pictures :-)
Posted by Thorsten Holz in honeynets at 11:56 | Comments (-12) | Trackbacks (12)

The Effect of Stock Spam on Financial Markets

Monday, May 1. 2006
Presumably you have noticed one specific type of spam messages in your inbox recently: spam messages that advertise stocks. Together with Rainer Böhme from the University of Dresden I examined this phenomenon a bit more closely and we could show that spam has a statistically significant influence on stock quotes. The paper was accepted at the Fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS 2006) and you can find a working draft at http://ssrn.com/abstract=897431

Abstract:
Spam messages are ubiquitous and extensive interdisciplinary research has tried to come up with effective countermeasures. However, little is known about the response to unsolicited e-mail, partly because spammers do not disclose sales figures. This paper correlates incoming spam messages that promote the investment in particular equity securities with financial market data. We use multivariate regression models to measure the impact of stock spam on traded volume and conduct an event study to find effects on market valuation. In both cases we have found evidence for significant reactions to spam campaigns in the short run. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are addressed.

Continue reading "The Effect of Stock Spam on Financial Markets"

Posted by Thorsten Holz in paper at 16:30 | Comments (-16) | Trackbacks (16)
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