Researchers Claiming Criminal Botnet Supports Ron Paul

After examining a latest flurry of mails, which have offered huge support to Ron Paul - a long shot Republican candidate - computer security researchers have noticed that Paul will be the first ever elected president (if elected) in 2008 who is getting support from a global network of hacked computer's spewing spam.

University of Alabama's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement project has discovered that several spam are being sent out supporting Paul carrying subject lines like "Ron Paul wins GOP debate!HMzjoqO". Interestingly, the random letters inserted in the end of subject lines is an attempt to fool spam filters, as per reports of Wired News.

Gary Warner, Director, Research in Computer Forensics, University of Alabama, Birmingham, said that this is clear example of a criminal act supporting a campaign with or without their consent, as per the news by Wired on October 31, 2007.

It was believed that mails were originating from Internet Protocols (IPs) all over the world, but the suspicion of researcher emerged when the e-mails did not come from the countries which their IPs indicates. For instance, the messages which claim to be from Italy were actually belonged to the US and messages which claim to come from the US were actually coming from Korea. Thus, the pattern clearly exhibits that the messages were not originating from the official campaign of Ron Paul but from an illegal spam operations and botnets.

Jesse Benton, the spokesman of Ron Paul, said that the campaign had no information about the scam. However, the Ron Paul camp wants the world to believe that it is not involved in the spam. Benton said that this is the first time he is hearing about this situation. He also added that if it is true, it could only be conducted by a well-intentioned and misguided follower trying to embarrass the campaign. Benton concluded by saying that both the ways, this has no connection with them, as per the reports of Wired on October 31, 2007.

Related article: Researchers Urge Caution against phishing Scams

» SPAMfighter News - 11/19/2007