Bing Flaw Exploited by Spammers Being Fixed

As per a post on security firm Webroot's threat blog, researchers have detected a fresh spam campaign in the third week of October 2009. In this campaign, scammers have made use of search engine's own redirection system as well as a link-shortening mechanism to direct netizens to spam webpages.

Reportedly, the problem lies in the way Bing formats links in the RSS feeds. As redirect to spam website from Bing isn't concealed, scammers are free to add anything as per their preference to the redirect URL of Bing. This, in turn, allows them to evade spam filters.

In a particular case, Webroot assessed an RSS feed in the Bing by means of a link which bounced through the link-shrinker of MySpace and grounded on spam webpage appearing as a news website tailored to the user's geolocation and offering suspicious work-from-home jobs.

Google, in the meantime, has denied of having any relation with this spam campaign.

A representative for Microsoft stated that they were carrying out tests to improve their customers' search experience; and in the course of their tests, they detected a bug which was thought to be causing the issue, reported ibtimes.com.au on October 22, 2009.

Moreover, commenting on the issue, a representative for MySpace said that users' security is the topmost priority for them, reported cnet news on October 21, 2009. The representative noted that with several thousands of link-shrinking systems accessible online - like MySpace's MSPLinks - it becomes extremely essential that websites like Bing should have appropriate security measures in place, such as blocking URL redirection.

As the fixing operation is still underway, Webroot has warned users to beware of all e-mails containing a link, particularly if it appears that the link has been designed to direct user to somewhere else than the address following "http://". Netizens are asked to be especially cautious of pharma companies offering gifts, vague fascinating news articles purporting to be coming from unknown people, and last but not the least, lifetime opportunities of money-making that sound too good to believe.

Related article: Bank Issues Spam Alerts

» SPAMfighter News - 11/3/2009