Spam now in MP3

October 19, 2007

Internet users got used to PDF, XFS and other formats of spam attachments. However, a new method of sending spam messages was used for mass mailing at the night on October 17-18 – this time spam messages had attached MP3 files containing the latest pump-and-dump stock scams that promoted certain shares which price is expected to raise dramatically.

The new method allows spammers to evade anti-spam filters. Besides, an audio message comes as a surprise for a user and, therefore, it can make a mailing more efficient. The new methods have been carefully examined by Goto Software, an anti-spam solutions company, their spam protection technology is used in anti-spam modules of mail protection solutions from Dr. Web. A corresponding security update was released and became available to all users of Dr. Web anti-spam solutions in a few hours after the new threat had been discovered.

“The new method of spam mailing is not widely used yet and I don’t expect a lot of spam messages containing attached MP3 files in the nearest future” – says Viatcheslav Medvedev, Dr. Web development manager - “Such MP3 files with very low bit-rate are not very efficient, that’s why spammers won’t use them very often. However, the new method has already been added to Vade Retro base, so if such mass mailing occurs again, spam messages with attached MP3 files will be detected by spam filters of Dr. Web solutions which makes them more efficient than anti-spam techniques using signature-based and Bayesian filtering.

To learn more about Dr. Web anti-spam solution visit the web-site of the company.