“dating Spam� Gone Wrong

[Peaches]

Jan25 2009

“Dating Spam†Gone Wrong

Dating spam†is becoming more rampant recently, which is somewhat expected due to Valentine’s Day being just a couple of weeks away.

But some of this dating spam is quite unique, and has caught our attention, as the spammed message claims to be coming from Trend Micro

The “From†field in the emails were tampered with to be able to evade spam filters. Also, a scheme called dictionary attack is used to send the spam mails:

A Dictionary Attack is a spammer tactic wherein spam is sent to random addresses from a given domain, hoping that some of it will get through. Unknowing users who respond will have their email addresses validated and added to the spammers’ list, thus causing the users to receive more and more spam mails.

However, a quite interesting and comical twist happens in this case. Since the “From†addresses are forged, the spammers themselves aren’t getting the replies or even the bounces to the spammed messages they sent. This attack is apparently just a waste of resources for spammers."

Trend Micro - more info & screenshots: http://blog.trendmicro.com/

[martymas]

geez they are getting very clever these days

back in the techtv days i thought they were clever

but now they are well in advance of me any how

marty