Pharmacy Spam, Spammers’ Latest Choice

According to security company G Data, several subjects connected to fake online pharmacies are being abused by spammers recently. Abusing the popular topics is a tactic adopted by online criminals to draw the attention of recipients as well as to evade spam filters. Pretending to be MSN's newsletters, these messages appear to be coming from e-mail addresses in Russia.

A study of the websites these e-mails direct to reveals that a total of 4 companies have registered the domains. It was found that the domains in use have been registered during the last few days. A few domains among the lot are usuallife.com, oftenpush.com, peopleeasy.com, extolbell.com, etc.

Moreover, a common China-based server hosts all of these websites. But the server is changed intermittently. The G Data experts have hitherto discovered two dubious servers: 61.136.59.69 and 119.88.56.123.

Meanwhile, they stated that the pharmacy-based junk e-mails usually emanate from botnets that run automatically and autonomously. Botnet is a term most commonly linked with malicious software, but can also indicate a network of PCs that use distributed computing software.

In March 2010, Symantec, another security firm, reported that Cutwail, Grum, Donbot and Rustock were a few leading botnets that distributed the highest volume of spam.

The security researchers, while remarking about pharma spam, stated that it fairly exemplified the way bot networks were being utilized for distributing spam, which victimized unprotected end-users. Botnets are an inexpensive medium to reach innumerable people quickly. Evidently, people purchase from such junk e-mails, otherwise such e-mails wouldn't have been sent. So it is advisable that consumers shouldn't purchase pharmaceutical items promoted via spam mails.

Meanwhile, G Data hasn't found any pharmaceutical promoting spam which poses a risk to PCs. However, it may not necessarily remain that way, therefore users are suggested that they should delete all e-mails that come to their mailboxes from unfamiliar sources, said Ralf Benzmuller, head of G Data SecurityLab. ComputerWeekly.com published this on April 22, 2010.

Related article: Pornography, No More Favored By Spammers

» SPAMfighter News - 5/15/2010