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Resurgence Of The Image Based Spam

According to latest statistics spam's utilizing images, instead of text, to promote their products currently comprise nearly one third of the total unwanted emails. Figures issued by the security company Secure Computing establish that emails where spammers conceal messages in picture files to elude detection have hiked to 200 per cent in the last few months.

Pictures escape filters more frequently than normal text-supported messages as spam filters have a tough time differentiating the subjects of those pictures to discern if they include hidden text promoting a ware or service.

Spam supported by images owes its return to devices that started circulating amongst spammers at the start of the year. These devices are equipped to alter images effectively to prevent being discovered by filters. The changes done to images are minute, involving just altered colors and margins. The device provides the spam contents an element of individuality.

" Image-supported spam is an especially complex problem for a few causes," stated Michael Osterman, Osterman Research's founding father and chief.

It is very difficult to spot with customary spam sieving and stymieing applications, and is usually much bigger than regular text-supported spam, using up greater bandwidth and storage space." Picture spams can also overcome filters that employ optical character identification applications to change pictures into text.

"Normal anti-spam package relies on message filtering methods like keyword screening and Bayesian scrutiny to spot spam," said Dr Paul Judge, Secure Computing's chief technology officer.The technology implemented to discern characters from pictures is not effectual on existing picture spam.

Anti-spam filters discovered a method of spotting those contents by applying numerical formulas and specific signatures that programs employed to pin them. However, with recent modernization being applied by spammers, image-supported spam has witnessed resurgence.

Although utilizing pictures in spam isn't a novel concept, altering the image in period of time in all communicated spam content is a comparatively new-found potential that spammers have recently developed," told Dmitri Alperovitch, Cipher Trust's research scientist.

An upsurge of image spam over text spam can be witnessed in the coming 3-9 months till pending innovations that can spot the latest types of spam are implemented.

Related article: Researchers Urge Caution against phishing Scams

» SPAMfighter News - 11/8/2006

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