Spammers now know how to bypass URL-Condensing Websites’ Security Systems

Symantec, within its "Symantec Intelligence Report for October 2011" released recently states that spammers have discovered one technique for bypassing security systems installed on URL-condensing Internet sites, which identify and eliminate malevolent web-links and that's by resorting to the domain name .info and setting their own utilities.

Notably, the company has detected over eighty websites that spammers created for reducing URL addresses' number of characters, reveals the report.

Website addresses that are reduced in length can cause security danger as people clicking on them can't be sure whether they'll be taken onto an authentic or malicious website. In addition to the popular URL-shortening websites like bit.ly, several organizations now possess their own website address condensers, thereby making end-users face certain challenge of staying aware of all such services, Symantec emphasizes.

Senior Intelligence Analyst Paul Wood for Symantec stated that spammers were utilizing open-source Web address condensing scripts, for free, towards the websites' operations. Computerweekly.com reported this on October 25, 2011.

And when spammers design condensed Web addresses using their own utilities, they dispatch spam containing these addresses while craft captions meant for drawing recipients' attention, like "It's a long time since I saw you last!"

As per Wood, this kind of social engineering trick is commonly found that arouses inquisitiveness, especially when there's an artificial sense of safety with respect to shortened URLs.

The fresh trick, understandably, follows the fact pertaining to improvement of lawful URL condensing websites that can now better detect malevolent URLs and e-mail junk, Symantec outlines within the new report.

Moreover, according to Symantec's report, approximately 74% of the entire electronic mail dispatched during October 2011 was junk e-mail. One e-mail from each batch of 343 messages was a phishing e-mail as also one e-mail from each batch of 235 messages was laced with malware. Encouragingly, Symantec stopped more than 3,000 websites daily, accounting for a 4% decline in contrast with September 2011. Also, most spammers belonged to USA, accounting for 34% of the total. And finally, the list of common spam kinds had pharmaceutical spam on No.1, gambling and casino spam on No.2, while jewelry spam was on No.3.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 04-11-2011

All SPAMfighter products offer a free trial!

SPAMfighter is a free spam filter for Outlook, Outlook Express,Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird.

Optimize your Slow PC for better performance. Try FREE scan now

Disk space recovery
and disk optimization. Try FULL-DISKfighter free

SPAMfighter Exchange Module is a Spam filter for Exchange server - Free 30 days trial.

Remove Spyware with SPYWAREfighter - Free 30 days trial

Antivirus software for your Windows PC - Free 30 days trial