A giant hole has been found in furniture giant Ikea’s international mail server in Sweden. Using some simple code, anyone could have sent out millions of spam emails, masquerading as official from .

Hackers could even have added graphics and popups. The vulnerability could allow the spammers to upload various to a user’s computer. Obviously, recipients of these emails could be influence by the well-known brand name, and thus tricked into giving personal information or credit cards numbers. Ikea says the problem was created by human error. It was advised of the problem a week ago, but the security gap was not fixed until yesterday, Jan. 17.

Another security researcher claimed the flaw could have been patched in just 10 minutes work. It is not known how long the problem existed before being fixed.

The Russian Business Network (RBN) was also a widely-known major criminal organization that promoted child porn, spam and malware. The volunteer points out that the RBN was able to operate unhindered until its activities were widely reported in the mainstream Western media.

Then, last November, the RBN vanished from the Internet. Shadowserver therefore suggests that immediate publicity and pressure could be used against other rogue networks and online criminals, forcing them off the Web. We sure wish them luck, and hope it works.

Syd Tash is a noted computer security consultant and author of How to Protect Your Computer Online. He has been keeping Internet surfers safe and secure since the last century. Find out how he does it; protect your own computer with five layers of protection right here: = > http://MyPCSecuritySite.com

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