(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Temporarily benefiting from a host’s legitimate reputation, spammers are taking advantage of “free-hosting” services for their nefarious purposes, according to a new report from computer security company McAfee.
In its January 2010 Spam Report, McAfee made note of the growing trend of spammers signing up for free subdomains and complimentary hosting. Oftentimes they are allowed to use a unique third-level domain, giving them the appearance of a legitimate site.
“Using a free hosting service is a good tactic for spammers because it is easier to automatically block a new infected website than to block a site that has been around for a longer period and has possibly had legitimate traffic associated with it,” wrote the McAfee report’s authors. “This edge can provide spammers a few precious additional hours before the spam-blocking services of the world blacklist that host. In the course of a few hours a botnet can generate billions of messages.”
With long-time free hosting site Geocities shutting its doors just months ago, dozens of similar free hosting sites have sprung up to provide free web space to anyone who requests it. Unfortunately, spammers have requested a lot of it.
According to McAfee, the free-hosting websites most heavily abused by spammers are related to 0catch.com, which serves up a number of free-hosting sites to anonymous persons, and apparently does nothing to prevent spammers and botmasters from hosting malware. Although there is no evidence to indicate active collusion between the free-hosting websites and the spammers that use them, McAfee warns legitimate businesses that they get what they pay for when it comes to free hosting. “[U]sing free-hosting sites that entertain spammers is likely to affect the perceived legitimacy of any honest client of one of these hosting sites.”
