It appears that a number of Yahoo email accounts have been hacked, and the hackers are using them to send spam to both personal recipients and yahoo groups (this is really the same thing for the sender).
Note that all the spam is coming from Yahoo accounts, and that the accounts are people we know (i.e. we are in their address books).
This has happened before, to other people and groups. See:
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/yahoo-email-hacked and
http://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN2544&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1334904815781&locale=en_US&y=PROD_ACCT. The FFML has the same spam, for example
The quick fix is for the person whose account is sending the spam to change their password. It is likely that their old password was something easily guessed. Instead, use something that is a non-dictionary word, uses numbers and/or symbols, and is long. Just make sure you can remember it, because a password written on a sticky note stuck to your screen ain't that great either.
Mark could exclude the affected accounts from the list, but you would still receive direct mail from them, so I'd focus on the first method.
That's my free IT consulting for the day.
Received on Tue Apr 24 2012 - 16:16:37 CEST