Posted 10/11/09 at 01:24:53 PM by Justin Kerr

Email spam is on the rise, no surprise there, but new information is suggesting that these emails could be coming from good old mom and dad as well. According to researchers over at Websense, personalized spam emails are being sent from tens of thousands of compromised accounts spanning all of the usual suspects including Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail.

Security researchers have suggested that given the sheer volume of spam emails being observed, the recent leak of some 10,000+ Hotmail accounts obtained through a phishing scam isn’t the only source of compromised email addresses, and it is very likely malware key loggers have helped to contribute to the rise in fraud. "The quantity of people hit makes me think that it was key logging — the success rate for phishing is only about one in 1,000," said Shulman, chief technology officer for security firm Imperva. "Secondly, when I went through the list of email account credentials, there were entries with the same username, but a slightly different password, which suggests that they're typos.

According to Patrick Runald from Websense “"Generally phishing is declining and being replaced by key logging, and considering the number of compromised accounts, it could be a combination of both." Apparently it also helps if your password isn’t 1-2-3-4-5. Time to go change the combination on my luggage!

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Posted 10/07/09 at 12:00:02 PM by Paul Lilly

Over 10,000 Hotmail email accounts were leaked to the web earlier this week as the result of a massive phishing scam, which may not have taken a whole lot of effort. After all, if you're going to choose "123456" as your password, compromising your account is like shooting fish in a barrel.

In this case, there were 64 said fish in a barrel full of over 10,000 compromised Hotmail accounts, making it the most commonly used password of the bunch, according to a researcher who combed through all the posted accounts.

About 42 percent of the passwords consisted of lowercase letters from "a" to "z," and just 6 percent secured their email accounts by mixing alpha-numeric characters. And almost 2,000 passwords were only six characters long (the longest was 30 characters).

An interesting side note - a bunch of the top 20 passwords were Spanish names, which might suggest that the victims were of Spanish origin or lived in Spanish-speaking communities, Wired.com reports.

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Posted 10/06/09 at 08:15:17 AM by Paul Lilly

In what security experts are calling one of the biggest security breaches of all time, Microsoft on Monday confirmed that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail account usernames and passwords were leaked to the Web. The Redmond company says the breach was likely the result of an elaborate phishing campaign.

"We determined that this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts," a Microsoft spokeswoman said in an email to Computerworld.

Neowin.net first reported the incident, claiming that "more than 10,000" credentials had been compromised. But the number could actually be much, much larger. Neowin.net said it only saw a partial list representing usernames starting with the letters "A" and "B."  Dave Jevans, the chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), surmises that the actual number could be over 100,000 accounts.

"A 0.5 percent rate, which is what 100,000 users would represent, isn't unreasonable for 10 to 20 million users," Jevans said. "They wouldn't have to spam every user to get that."

According to Microsoft, Hotmail stands at 400 million registered users strong, though the company didn't say how many of those are active users.

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Posted 08/18/09 at 05:42:29 AM by Pulkit Chandna

Gmail shed its beta tag in July, after having been around for five years. However, Gmail has acquired a different tag now: that of the third most popular webmail service in the US, at least according to internet research firm comScore. Gmail leapt past AOL to take the third spot during the month of July, a month in which it entertained 37 million unique visitors as opposed to 36.4 million users that visited AOL.

It now has Windows Live Hotmail – currently second with 47 million monthly unique visitors – well within its reach. Gmail’s unique visitors swelled by 25% during the first 7 months of 2009, while Hotmail only managed to increase unique visitors by 8%. Yahoo Mail is the most popular webmail service with 106 million unique visitors.

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Posted 09/06/08 at 03:56:09 PM by Justin Kerr

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley has apparently learned that Microsoft’s online alternative to Google Docs will emerge from beta before the end of this year. Office Live Workspace is a service that is geared to work as either a standalone product, or in tandem with Office 2003-2007. It has been suggested that the current public beta is fairly close to the final version, and the primary issue outstanding is language support. Microsoft wishes to expand the 11 languages it currently supports to 37 before it officially lifts the beta tag later this year. Spokesmen Kirk Gregersen from Microsoft has also reportedly commented on the surprising trends they have identified during the public beta. It was originally assumed that casual users such as students would use Live Workspace as a means to author and remotely access documents. Instead, the service is being used mostly as a single access point for collaborative efforts involving multiple users. Insiders have suggested that this only further demonstrates why desktop versions of Microsoft Office won’t be leaving us anytime soon.

For those who haven’t been following the development of Office Live Workspace, hit the jump to learn more about the services currently being offered.

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Posted 08/31/08 at 09:56:57 PM by Justin Kerr

Windows Live Hotmail’s 260 million users worldwide can look forward to a multitude of new features that were recently unveiled by Microsoft. Hotmail wave 3 promises a speed boost of over 70% during sign in, and will enable dynamic storage that will grow at a rate of 250 MB per month. Microsoft is also reportedly working to address the user interface problems which have plagued the service since the roll out of wave 2. Hotmail users currently have the option of picking between the well loved “classic” or the “full” user interface which reportedly suffers from a low adoption rate. This low adoption rate has kept the classic version alive, and made it difficult for Microsoft to roll out new features. Hotmail wave 3 looks to merge the layout of the “classic” with the functionality of the “full”, an approach they are hoping will finally please everyone. This is something that is desperately needed to help attract and retain users currently considering competing services such as Gmail or Yahoo. Improved integration of Live contacts, calendar, and instant messaging help to round out the initial batch of leaked features. The press release doesn’t make any mention of the long rumored POP support or any Skydrive integration, but hopefully these features are still in the works. No public beta has been announced yet, but the “coming soon” headline suggests it probably isn’t that far off.

Are you a former or current Hotmail user? Will these new features keep you with the service or send you running back? Hit the jump and let us know what you think.

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Posted 06/13/08 at 08:55:14 PM by Mark Soper

It may be Friday the 13th, but there's good luck in the air for 64-bit Windows, Hotmail, antiphishing, and Windows XP fans. Read on for all the details.

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Posted 02/25/08 at 11:48:58 PM by Mark Soper

Could you use 5GB of online storage - free? Of course! Microsoft is now offering it with SkyDrive. We take it for a test flight.

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