Microsoft has added some new features to Hotmail to try and prevent such things. The new Hotmail security works from both ends–one to strengthen Hotmail account security in the first place, and the second to make it easier to identify and flag accounts that have been compromised.

A Microsoft Privacy and Safety blog post explains:

At Hotmail, we know that account hijacking is a big problem, and we continue to work hard to prevent it. We’ve noticed a couple of things about hijacked accounts. First, many accounts have weak passwords that make them easy targets for hijackers. Second, when someone’s account gets hijacked, their friends often find out before they do, because the hijacker uses their account to send spam or phishing email to all their contacts.

These two observations led us to develop a couple of new features that help protect your accounts. The first lets you report a friend’s account as compromised – a feature unique to Hotmail – and the second prevents you from using common passwords that make your account easy to hack.

Click here to read the complete post.

Highlights from the most recent report include:

• Spam – 77.8 percent in July (an increase of 4.9 percentage points since June 2011)

• Phishing – One in 319.3 emails identified as phishing (an increase of 0.01 percentage points since June 2011)

• Malware – One in 280.9 emails in July contained malware (an increase of 0.02 percentage points since June 2011)

• Malicious Web sites – 6,797 Web sites blocked per day (an increase of 25.5 percent since June 2011)

• 35.9 percent of all malicious domains blocked were new in July (an increase of 0.8 percentage points since June 2011)

• 21.1 percent of all Web-based malware blocked was new in July (an increase of 0.8 percentage points since June 2011)

• Aggressively unstable malware leads to a rise in sophisticated socially engineered attacks

• Large scale malware attack using URL shortening services

For more details, download and read the 21-page PDF report for yourself–Symantec Intelligence Report: July 2011.

Key Findings – Email Attacks: This Time, It’s Personal

• Returns from mass email-based attacks declined by more than 50 percent from US$1.1 billion in June 2010 to $500 million in June 2011.
• Mass spam volumes plummeted from 300 billion daily spam messages to just 40 billion between June 2010 and June 2011.
• There is an increase in spearphishing and personalized scams and malicious attacks.
• Spearphishing attacks have increased threefold, while scams and malicious attacks have increased fourfold.
• The overall cost of targeted attacks to organizations worldwide is $1.29 billion annually.

Like almost all types of cybercrime exploits, the success of targeted attacks relies on technical holes and the all-too-human tendency to misplace trust. Targeted attacks are the most elusive threat to protect against and have the potential to deliver the most potent negative impact. Very low in volume, they focus on a specific individual or group under cover of anonymity provided by specialized botnet distribution channels. Typically, they rely on malware or APTs (Advanced Persistent Threats) to harvest desired data over a period of time. An example of a targeted attack is the infamous Stuxnet worm, which had the potential to severely disrupt industrial computing systems and could traverse non-networked systems, thus placing at risk even systems unconnected to networks or the Internet.

Spearphishing attacks, though more costly to mount and lower in volume than mass spam attacks, also pose serious consequences for today’s enterprises. Many spearphishing attacks ultimately lead to financial theft, making them both highly dangerous to victims and highly valuable to cybercriminals. Spearphishing campaigns, which are a highly customized evolution of the traditional mass attack technique of phishing, can net 10 times the profit of a mass attack.

The global study focuses on perspectives from 361 information technology professionals from 50 countries andwas compiled by Cisco Security Intelligence Operations, which provides real-time threat intelligence to help Cisco stay ahead of the latest cyber threats. Cisco SIO is the world’s largest cloud-based security ecosystem, using SensorBase data of almost 1 million live data feeds from deployed Cisco email, Web, firewall and intrusion prevention system (IPS) solutions.

Download the full report – Email Attacks: This Time It’s Personal

A Microsoft On The Issues blog posts describes some of the key findings of Microsoft SIR v10:

· Rogue Security Software – Rogue security software was detected and blocked on almost 19 million systems in 2010, and the top five families were responsible for approximately 13 million of these detections.

· Phishing – Phishing using social networking as the lure increased 1,200 percent – from a low of 8.3 percent of all phishing in January to a high of 84.5 percent in December 2010. Phishing that targeted online gaming sites reached a high of 16.7 percent of all phishing in June.

· Adware – Global detections of adware when surfing websites increased 70 percent from the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2010. This increase was almost completely caused by the detection of a pair of new Adware families, JS/Pornpop and Win32/ClickPotato, which are the two most prevalent malware in many countries.

A rapidly increasing number of Mac users are learning just how pervasive the rogue AV threat is as well. Mac Defender has been plaguing Mac OS X to the extent that Apple finally had to admit it is an issue and commit to delivering a fix for Macs to detect and prevent the threat.