Just when it appeared tech firms had the upper hand against spam, spammers have unleashed new forms of the meddlesome e-mail to trick filters.
Spam in the form of popular PDF e-mail attachments and electronic greeting cards is confounding e-mail security systems and annoying consumers. The recent Storm e-mail virus and several pump-and-dump stock scams are clogging inboxes and snookering consumers into downloading malicious software. And it could get worse as the holidays approach, anti-spam experts say.
The trend illustrates the shifting nature of spam’s deceptive packaging. As anti-spam vendors come up with solutions, new versions pop up. The most common spam ? which uses images to avoid the detection of spam filters ? is quickly fading because of advances in anti-spam technology.
But spam in PDFs, non-existent in May, now accounts for 8% of unsolicited commercial e-mail. Last week, a PDF promoting a pump-and-dump scam contributed to a 30% increase in overall spam. It was sent from compromised PCs turned into spam-spreading bots, security firm Sophos says.
continued @ USA Today
2 Responses
Pridelets for August 18: Jesse Helms needs your… — P2P information
August 18th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
1[…] nature of spams deceptive packaging. As anti-spam vendors come up with solutions, new source: Spammers find new ways to slip through, TomCoyote | Security and Tech […]
Scam
August 20th, 2007 at 10:55 am
2The crux of the matter is that there is, unfortunately, a lot of money in spamming.
All the while that there is a small minority of recipients responding to it, the spammers will feel it is worthwhile to develop new ways to bypass filters, etc, to deliver their rubbish.
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