Spammers Involve Google Docs in their Latest Technique

According to MessageLabs, spammers have found a purely legitimate method for posting their content on the Web. They are using Google Docs.

According to the security provider, spammers have shown that they can be equally creative along with being tenacious. The security experts say that in the evolution of spam, first they saw image spam, followed with PDF spam, MP3 spam, and currently, the use of Google Docs helps dodge spam filters effectively.

Describing the recent trick of spamming, anti-spam Technologist Matt Sergeant at MessageLabs said that a more accepted method to prevent spam inflow is to use URL block lists, as published by Internetnews on May 26, 2008. However, according to Sergeant, when the name 'Google' appears in it, the spam would really not get blocked as it represents all sorts of validity.

But according to the security experts, there is some brightness to the new spam technique though with a thin lining and that is these Google Docs pages are not the least as influential as HTML. Security analysts say the most that spammers can render is embed links on the page and convince victims to try them to access another Website. They can't implant a malicious IFrame, HTML code, or vicious JavaScript like they are accustomed exercising on Web pages.

Commenting on the new technique of spamming, Research Director for security issues Peter Firstbrook with Gartner said that enthusiasm for spammers might just die out when they find being forced to constantly create new Google Docs accounts as the old ones get shut down at the filters. Internetnews reported this.

On May 8, 2008, although MessageLabs alerted Google about one such Google Docs page as spam, it still remained live on May 23, 2008.

Sergeant said that the page continued to be active even after a fortnight and this showed Google's slackness in its reactions, although it needed to take action fast.

Also, MessageLabs in the fourth week of May 2008 reported that there was again a rise in the volume of spam mails from the Storm botnet in contrast to previous reports that Storm's numbers were dwindling.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 6/2/2008