Festive season, spam season

Christmas does not only come with endless parties and festivals but also a flood of spam. Yet, every year, the amount of spam is "flooded" in computer users' mailboxes this year, security experts said.

" Every year, at the end of the year, the amount of spam increases dramatically. But never, how bad is this situation, " said Daniel Druker, Postini's executive vice president, a company that provides message security services.

Spammer spreads millions of spams every day with a tireless rhythm. Most of them are advertisements for brand-name drugs and sex aids, and the rest offer stocks. The number of phishing emails, for example users to disclose personal information is also overwhelming.

The spam rushing into the enterprise's internal mail system could cause the system to hang stiffly for a few hours, if not a few days, Druker warned. " The fear is that e-mail is so popular today. No business can exist without email, so they have no way of closing in on spam ."

Last year, spam cost the United States 17 billion dollars (loss of productivity and cost to implement solutions to stop them). On a global scale, this figure is estimated at no less than US $ 50 billion.

The reason for the sudden increase in spam volume during the festival season is because this is also the time when users of online shopping computers are strongest. " They find ways to trick you into buying or revealing sensitive information. Everyone is busy, rushing to shop and so sometimes they forget to be careful. The spammer has made good use of this mentality. " said Jerry Upton, a security specialist for Messaging Anti-Abuse.

New tricks

According to the security world, the amount of spam has really exploded in the past few months because spammer began to apply new tricks. Latest statistics show that spam accounts for 93% of the total email sent in the third quarter, a record number. It is clear that spammer has completely defeated the security industry at this time.

The most talked about trick is sending spam as an image instead of the whole character as before. This tip can easily bypass existing filters, which are only programmed to identify some common character clusters.

If in 2005, only about 2% of spam-shaped spam entered this year, they accounted for 30%, a dizzying growth rate.

Another trick that is very popular with spammers is phishing, which means creating genuine emails, pretending to be reputable companies to trick recipients into revealing passwords and information. There is also "Pumping and stamping", a type of spam that entices users to buy shares of a certain company that seems to be hot. Then only a few hours later, they can make that stock fall dramatically and stand out . buy back.

The battle between spammer and anti-spam faction is like "thief police", Panda Software expert JJSchoch likened. " The police tried and won this burglar, but in the next case, the thief left the police in pain ."

Not only exploding in quantity, the nature of spam is also very different from its original period, Druker analyzed. " Initially, hackers just tried to prove how smart they were. Gradually, spam turned into a annoying and frustrating marketing channel. But now a large amount of spam is caused by cybercrime gangs. sent with the goal of stealing your money ".

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