Scammers Evade Spam Filters By Using Email ‘from’ Fields

[Peaches]

Dec18

Scammers Evade Spam Filters by using Email ‘From’ Fields

"Scam messages that purport to be from banks, government institutions, or even from certain individuals circulate the Web. Email messages where recipients are told that they have won a prize or are asked for donations would already be familiar to most Web users. Scammers, however, show no signs of slowing down using this technique.

The Trend Micro Content Security team received samples of spammed email messages with the same announcement as most scam mails: the recipient has won a huge amount of money in lottery. Except this time, scammers placed this said fraudulent content in the From field and not in the Subject or in the message body itself.

The spammers behind this operation are doing this to bypass antispam products. Analyzing the sample email message above through text editor, we see how the From field is literally a common content found in scam messages. Spam filters may already be blocking messages when similar content are detected in Subject fields and in message bodies, but not in From fields."

More here plus screenshots:

http://blog.trendmicro.com/