Peter Dinham
Thursday, 11 June 2009 15:03
Business IT -
Security
Page 2 of 3
However, while image spam has increased, Symantec says it
is spam messages containing URLs in the message body that continue to
be the predominant spam trend, with 91.7 percent of all spam messages
in May contained a URL.
“These URLs are often associated with sites
which allow users to set up free accounts including free webhosting
accounts and URLs that are registered and operated by spammers,” says
Symantec, adding that the URLs are “used to promote certain products
and services, and spammers often rotate the URLs used in their spam
attacks in an effort to evade anti-spam detection.”
Symantec also says that 52 percent of the URLs observed last month had
a com top level domain (TLD), and 32 percent had a cn ccTLD. Of these,
the number of URLs with a com TLD decreased by 12 percent, and the
number of URLs with a cn ccTLD increased by 12 percent, with Symantec
concluding that the obvious switch is a spam tactic employed by
spammers in which they alternate between different TLDs in an attempt
to evade anti-spam filters.
In relation to the social networking site of the moment – Twitter –
Symantec says that with more and more people become connected through
social networking sites, it is no surprise that the “trust and
reputation earned by these websites is misused by spammers.”
According to Symantec, during May spam attacks have leveraged Twitter
for two spam campaigns - “Make Money Fast” (MMF) and dating spam.
In the MMF attack, reports Symantec, a “risk-free Twitter profit
software” kit is offered, with recipients of the message being directed
to a web-form which asked for personal information including name,
email address and postal address.
This was followed by another form asking the Twitter user for credit card number, expiration date and security code.
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