O.T. - Spam-Virus Marriage

[Guest guest]

I have been contacted by members who are receiving this spam. Everyone on the

web is receiving it. Be careful and don't open unless you know who it is from

and scan with virus software before opening. Frank

 

http://informationweek.securitypipeline.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=F1\

K3ID3UJ3UQIQSNDBCSKHQ?articleId=16600263

 

December 07, 2003

 

Spam-Virus Marriage Seen As Leading 2004 Internet Threat

 

 

 

 

By Antone Gonsalves, TechWeb News

 

The use of viruses to commandeer personal computers on the Internet for relaying

spam is a trend that started this year and is expected to escalate in 2004, an

e-mail security company said Friday.

 

In the last six months, MessageLabs Inc. has seen a steady rise in the use of

spam and virus techniques in sending out junk e-mail hawking drugs, pornography

and sexual enhancements.

The Minneapolis-based company, which filters corporate e-mail for spam and

viruses, intercepts about 27 spam messages a second today, up from two per

second at the same time last year. Sixty-six percent of those messages are

generated from PCs that have been taken over by spammers without the knowledge

of the computers' owners, Mark Sunner, chief technology officer for MessageLabs,

said.

The number of PCs commandeered by spammers is expected to increase next year.

" Spammers are taking advantage of the flaw in traditional anti-virus software

people are running on their desktops today, " Sunner said.

Traditional anti-virus software requires users to download code capable of

detecting a virus after it's released on the Internet.

Until this year, people seeking a thrill from the chaos they could cause on the

Internet accounted for most of the viruses. The malevolent code is hidden in an

e-mail attachment that the sender tries to trick a person into opening by

pretending the message is from a legitimate vendor or someone who can be

trusted, like a friend.

Spammers are now using the same techniques to get PC users to unknowingly

install applications that allow the machines to be used later to relay spam. The

pre-eminent example of this kind of malevolent code was the Sobig.F virus, which

had such an effective mass-mailing engine that it managed to shut down some

corporate and government networks.

" The authors behind Sobig were definitely spammers using the virus to harvest

lots of machines to blast spam, " Sunner said.

Relaying spam through other computers enables spammers to remain anonymous and

avoid law enforcement agencies. In addition, by hiding the original source of

the mass-mailings, spammers can avoid black lists used by filtering software to

separate spam from legitimate messages.

MessageLabs predicts that by April of next year, 70 percent of the e-mail

traffic on the Internet will be spam, up from 50 percent today. " To be honest, I

think that figure is really quite conservative, " Sunner said.

Other trends started this year and expected to increase in 2004 include the use

of e-mail to trick people into going to what they think is a legitimate vendor's

web site and provide confidential information, such as social security or credit

card numbers, MessageLabs said. The latest incident this year involved an e-mail

that tried to dupe PayPal customers.

MessageLabs will discuss e-mail-threat trends in an end-of-the-year report,

which is scheduled for release next week. The report also will contain the top

10 viruses of the year, based on the number of infected e-mails intercepted by

Message labs. The viruses and number of infected e-mails are:

 

W32/Sobig.F-mm, 32,432,730;

W32/Swen.A-mm, 4,184,129;

W32/Klez.H-mm, 4,006,766;

W32/Yaha.E-mm, 1,920,424;

W32/Dumaru.A-mm, 1,129,061;

W32/Mimail.A-mm, 1,052,481;

W32/Yaha.M-mm, 862,682;

W32/Sobig.A-mm, 842,729;

W32/BugBear.B-mm, 814,865;

W32/SirCam.A-mm, 511,578.

 

 

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