| Spam ain't spam anymore |
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| Written by Stuart Corner | |
| Wednesday, 19 December 2007 | |
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Page 1 of 3 "Spam volume increased 100 percent, to more than 120 billion spam messages daily worldwide...about 20 spam messages per day for every man, woman and child on the planet," it said. And that was the least of the problem. "Spam has become more dangerous. Earlier versions of spam attacks were primarily selling some type of product. In 2007, more than 83 percent of spam contained a URL to a rogue Web server that was frequently serving malware. In accordance with a trend towards the blending of different malware techniques, URL-based viruses increased 256 percent." 2007, according to IronPort, was the year of spam attachments. "Spammers conducted trials of more than 20 different file attachment types to determine which had the best success rates. Rapid onset spam attacks became commonplace, with outbreaks spiking in volume very quickly and anti-spam companies scrambling to adapt. This left little reaction time, and many anti-spam customers found themselves re-evaluating anti-spam products that could not adapt." And this spam is really dangerous stuff. "Many of the most malicious attacks start as a seemingly innocuous spam message with nothing more than a few words of text and a single URL. These messages often slip past traditional spam engines that are looking for keywords, or for graphics touting the latest stock spam. When they land in the recipient's inbox they have made it to the most sensitive part of the corporate network. All it takes is one errant click of the mouse and the payload is downloaded - providing full access to the user's computer, and possibly the internal network." If that news wasn't bad enough, the outlook is even worse. "Spam volumes will continue to grow without limit. The underlying economics support this and it has profound implications for the anti-spam industry. As spam volumes grow, spam filters must increase their catch rates." |
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