Twitter Notification Spam Hit End-Users Mailboxes: MX Lab

According to MX Lab, an e-mail security company in Belgian, fresh malicious e-mails are entering users' inboxes pretending to be formal notices from Twitter.

Actually, following the interception of a few e-mails by the security company it was found that the e-mails had a caption "Twitter Notification" along with a spoofed sender's address such that they seemed as originating from postmaster.twitter.com.

Moreover, the spammers, to give their e-mails a legitimate look, carried out an alteration of a genuine template of Twitter e-mail.

The messages tell recipients that there are notices pending within the Twitter accounts they hold, while a web-link is given which they can click through to view those notices. But, on clicking, users are taken onto an Internet site, US Drugs, marketing antibiotics, pain killers and male enhancement drugs.

The site reportedly, is one among a series of fake pharmaceuticals, an affiliate program, which became well-known when "Canadian Pharmacy" fell in 2010. Also, the servers that host the site are normally hijacked, while the site itself exhibits dubious web-links like those for a false Verisign or false Verified through Visa logo, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and license for false pharmacy web-links.

Worryingly, the above e-mail scam against Twitter shows that spam related to pharmaceuticals have once again gained its earlier standard of being the leader following its drastic fall since the forceful 2010 initiative for fighting spam. Clearly, the spammers don't wish for losing their business' lucrative aspect as is just evident, security researchers indicate.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned issue becomes even strong when the statistics from Kaspersky another security company for January 2011 are considered which shows that spam volumes related to Viagra advertising rose remarkably. Indeed, there was rapid increase during January 2011-beginning whilst pharmacy spam volumes nearly accounted for 60% of the total e-mail junk.

Ultimately, security specialists suggest that deploying anti-spam filters is the most appropriate means to lessen the above kind of spam. Also, netizens should remain more cautious when following dubious web-links provided within random e-mails since they more often than not connect to destructive websites. Finally, such e-mails must be erased, the specialists note.

Related article: Twitter Flaw Compels Victims to Follow Hacker’s Account

» SPAMfighter News - 3/9/2011