June 2007 Archives

Spam continues to evolve in interesting directions. Here's a quick roundup of some recent developments.

Career scofflaws The Pirate Bay have just launched a new service called BayImg, which promises free, uncensored image hosting for any 'legal' image. This has certain implications for spam.

Spammers have launched another DDoS attack, targeting a number of anti-spam sites including Spamhaus, URIBL and SURBL. The attack is being attributed to the spam gang behind the Storm Worm (aka Zhelatin) malware, a Trojan that supports the installation of a number of purpose-built components including a dedicated DDoS tool. Earlier this year, the Storm Worm spam gang launched a similar attack that targeted several anti-spam sites (including spamnation.info) as well as download sites for the Warezov Trojan, spam-related malware developed by a rival gang.

Here's an interesting spammer trick. I received an email with the subject text 'Click to confirm your Google Alert' and the following text in the body:

Google received a request to start sending Alerts for the search [ *] Viagra as low as $2.81! See http://spamdomain/ for more info. EXPRESS DELIVERY! ULTIMATE QUALITY! [* 3152661552.51321 ] to user@domain.

(Actual addresses remove to protect the innocent and frustrate the guilty)