Latest spamming tricks take on a new form

Spammers and hackers can create emails or programmes that take many forms and create one of the main threats to conducting business on the Internet. One of the latest tactics is to infect PCs with a new type of Trojan horse program, which can be one of the most potent threats to a computer or network system, either at home or in the office.

A Trojan horse is a malicious software program concealed within seemingly harmless software, but when activated by the innocent user it can be extremely destructive. They can be used to establish a user as a “zombie” computer host from which other programs or actions may be generated, without the knowledge of the innocent user.

The latest scam has been nick-named by threat management solutions firm, Sophos a ‘joe job’. The spam campaign looks as if it has come from a reputable source but in effect contains malicious code and is extremely damaging if it infects recipients.

One example is an email that was distributed looking as if it had been sent by BBC News and another in June tried to target those using Gmail. The email stated that a prize of $500 was on offer which could be redeemed at what looked to be a Gmail link. The link actually took people to a Tripod-hosted site whereby users had to spend $8.60 as a membership fee before they could gain access to their ‘winnings’ (which of course were never there!). Not only that but the email offered to pay the reward via PayPal or other electronic accounts. Those falling for the initial spam then handed over more personal data.

Security firms are now reporting that spamming is taking on more sophisticated methods of defrauding unsuspecting net users. Spammers now use email, Web and other techniques to make the email look more authentic. With the incorporation of interconnectivity, emails that look harmless become potentially more dangerous.

Everyone in business and at home needs to be vigilant about hacking. It’s something that is never going to be eradicated and the number of these threats is forever growing. Security firm, McAfee recently reported that it took 18 years to build a database to provide protection for 100,000 threats (this target was reached in September 2004). It only took a further 22 months to double the number of threats to 200,000!

Spammers may be individuals working from their bedrooms to see what they can do to create trouble or for some warped publicity kick, or they can be organised groups who aim to generate significant sums of money from unsuspecting recipients. Many spammers these days try to get past spam filters by using an image. Such image spam can cause ‘bandwidth bloat’ according to Commtouch, another online security firm. This type of spamming accounts, on average, for 30% of spam sent around the world and can sometimes be as high as 70% when it reaches the height of its distribution.

In a statement by Dan Yachin, Commtech’s research director of EMEA Emerging Technologies, the dangers of image spam become obvious, ‘while textual spam messages cause loss of productivity, image spam messages that are three times their size are a whole different ball game, causing a real bandwidth and storage crisis.’

if you’d like more information on this issue or how to protect your business, please contact us now.

Leave a Reply