Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Beware of Image spam


After a relatively long
hiatus, image spam
is making a massive
comeback in newer and
improved forms that
can evade antispam
fi lters. Rather than
clickable links, these
messages now have
obfuscated URLs hidden
as images or text, with
random white spaces
and masking characters
inserted in them.

The images even instruct users to type a URL into their
browser's address bar.
Subject lines as usual rely on deliberately
misspelled phrases promising sex enhancers and cheap
pharmaceuticals to tempt users to click on them. Multiple
similar subject lines from IP addresses spread across
many countries indicate a botnet of compromised PCs is
at work here. Globally, threats including spam have risen
dramatically in the year 2009.

No comments: