New Spam Campaign Detected

According to the security company 'AppRiver,' spammers have launched a spam campaign posing as e-mails from ICANN and tries to frighten recipients so that they proceed to click on sinister web-links.

The security company states that the 38th meeting of ICANN at Brussels (Belgium) during the end-week of June 2010 had drawn tremendous attention from the media. Seemingly, the malware creators responsible for the latest spam campaign during the 1st week of July 2010 felt that the ICANN event was so prominent or interesting that it was a good opportunity to impersonate the agency and infect people's PCs with their malware.

However, AppRiver states that this spam campaign appears quite weak in quality. Although the spammers added believable graphics and logos for lending the e-mails an authentic touch, the web-links in them are so weak that spam filters have managed to spot and break them.

These links work in the typical manner. They (links) first take an end-user to a website, which downloads malevolent, disguised JavaScript from another website. Thereafter, the the end-user is diverted to a Canadian Pharmacy website. A critical function of this JavaScript is to equip the victim's system with a backdoor facility that actually helps in downloading even more malware. AppRiver states that till now, there have been over 20 Million spam messages from the latest and similar previous e-mail campaigns on the Net.

It (the security company) discusses another interesting truth about the new campaign. The campaign is the work of the same spammers who circulated the bogus receipts for purchase orders on Amazon.com and Buy.com as well as the multiple versions of 'password resetting' or 'account locking' notice scams which clogged anti-spam filters during the 1st week of July 2010.

Based on its entire discussion, AppRiver advises computer users that they should ensure their software applications are always up-to-date, particularly their Java Runtime Environment and browser applications that are often attacked. Moreover, it is equally important to install appropriate antivirus software on a system, the company adds.

Related article: New Zealand Releases Code To Reduce Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 7/14/2010