71 years and billions of cans later, it's hard to argue with the success of Jay Hormel's "Miracle Meat". Another "spam" just reached a milestone, but it’s no cause for celebration. 30 years old, and e-mailed spam is more rampant than ever. E-mail security company Sophos says that 95 percent of all email today is spam; Symantec estimates between 80 percent and 85 percent, but whatever the number, it's gum in the works.

Too bad they waste all that ingenuity and determination on illegitimate enterprise, but like counterfeiters, spammers, hackers and cyber-criminals are seduced by the dark side of commerce. Not only is their product cholesterol-laden, clogging bandwidth and sapping time and energy, it can be highly toxic.

Thousands of corporate executives at Citibank, AOL, eBay and other companies just received phony federal subpoenas carrying malicious software. This so-called "whaling" attack targeting big "phish" was designed to steal valuable personal and company information.

Crafted with the seal of the U.S. federal court in San Diego, the e-mails were addressed to executives using their names, addresses and other individual details.

Executives and IT managers take note, courtesy of Information Week: while cyber-crooks generally attack via e-mail, they are preternaturally skilled at staying one step ahead of safeguards. Independent of e-mails, they also use the web to launch malware and establish botnets--networks of hijacked computers--from which spyware, viruses, spam and other threats can be distributed.

Reportedly, a new infected webpage is discovered every 14 seconds: check out the Safe and Productive Browsing in a Dangerous Web World white paper for more information.

Jeff Heilman

5/7/08