With the housing market taking a continued hit in September, in-boxes also took an increased hit as spammers exploited the recent market slowdown and subsequent interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve in the U.S. As noted in the October State of Spam Report, Symantec has seen a marked increase in spam directed towards homeowners and prospective homeowners offering refinancing, home equity loans, and actual houses. First, the spammer needs to collect personal information from the recipient to evaluate whether they are eligible for an offer. This is information they can turn around and use to their advantage for further spamming.

Pump-and-dumps have given ways to new opportunities in the housing market. So the pressure has shifted from stock targets to real estate. I'm not sure that is such great news after all.

In a similar vein, McAfee Avert Labs blog notes some good news on the malware front:

In the last month we’ve seen arrests and a conviction related to two malware families, Downloader-AAP and W32/Fujacks. Now there’s been an arrest and indictment of an alleged botmaster, related to the DDoS attack on CastleCops. Certainly not such smooth sailing for malware authors these days!

But even that silver lining has its requisite cloud:

The Fujacks author apparently has a very lucrative job waiting for him when he finishes his sentence, and three men who were recently fined by the FTC for surreptitiously distributing adware, will apparently be keeping $3.2 million in profits from their underhanded activities.