Take this spam to Cuba
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in phishing, Blog, Spam, Security, email on
It used to be the case that the word ‘hijack’ immediately drummed up visions of terrorists and airplanes, special service soldiers storming in with machine guns blazing. That sort of thing. The truth today is a lot less exciting, but still rather dangerous. When I hear the word hijack I think of spam.
Either of the sort that scumbags use when latching on to the important story of the day, and hijack that news to spread spam and malware such as has been doing the rounds most recently with the Haiti earthquake.
Alternatively, and proving to be even more problematical, is spam that contains a hijacked IP. Symantec warns that this kind of hijacked spam which is also known as ‘dotted quad’ has risen significantly in the last month.
Indeed, one December attack alone on Christmas Eve at 2pm apparently resulted in a quarter of the world’s spam containing hijacked IPs. Blimey! Symantec reports that this type of spam has increased three fold when compared to rates during November 2009.
This shouldn’t be a problem, to be honest, but unfortunately while the online world continues to be populated by link clicking idiots it will be.
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Snibbo - January 22, 2010 on 8:58 am
I see what you’re doing there… putting a link into your post to see how many idiots click on it! Haha! Mind you, I clicked on it - I promise it was just to find out if there was a joke on the other end of it though, such as ‘See - Idiot!’, but no, it was just another post. Shame.
Comment by Josie Herbert - January 22, 2010 on 9:53 am
It only takes 2 per cent of link clickers to keep the spam world churning. But Snibbo makes a good point: what about clicking on links in blog posts and articles?
Comment by Stu Capon - January 22, 2010 on 11:12 am
I reminding users to never SEND click-able links. If the recipient has to copy the text to the browser they make a concious decision to follow the link and also see it’s target address. That seems to remind people that links are fraught with issues and should be checked before following from received mail.
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