June 22, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Spammers are using spyware to develop increasingly sophisticated and targeted spam attacks, according to MessageLabs (messagelabs.com), a provider of managed email security services.
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According to the company, spammers are installing spyware on victims’ machines and using it to retrieve information about users. The spammer then uses that information to come up with content for the subject line of spam emails. The logic is that by using familiar words and terms such as passwords or a company’s names, users will be more likely to open unsolicited email.
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MessageLabs said it discovered the use of this technique last week as part of its analysis of 50 million emails a day for its 8,500 customers.
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“The spyware finds its way on to machines in the usual ways, and is then used to log personal information and send it directly back to the spammer. These details are then incorporated into spam emails and sent back to the unlucky victim, who might not be suspicious of the emails because they seem to contain information directly relevant to them. This represents a shift on behalf of some spammers from a random, scattergun approach to a more tailored attack. As yet it does not seem to be a widespread technique, but we expect it to become more common and computer users should be on their guard,” says Matt Sergeant, senior anti-spam technologist for MessageLabs. “The convergence of spyware and spam is the latest milestone in the evolution of spamming techniques as we increasingly find that spammers, virus writers and hackers are combining their malware to create evermore sophisticated email security threats. It is further evidence that the lines between the different types of email security threat are becoming more and more blurred.”
