New spammer tool foils filters
The most notorious automatic spam-sending software on the Internet has introduced a new feature that stealthily gets around key anti-spam filters.
SendSafe is popular with spammers because it is easy to use. With drag-and-drop bulk e-mailing capabilities, the Windows program can turn anyone into a spammer overnight. SendSafe users «rent» lists of compromised home computers, which are then used as an army of e-mail spam machines. No hard figures are available, but Internet security experts believe that SendSafe and a similar program called Direct Mail Sender are used by a majority of spammers.
Spam fighters beat back these programs by blacklisting the Internet address of infected computers, but it’s a tough game of whack-a-mole. Each week, another 100,000 home machine become infected, says Steve Linford, who operates the blacklist organization Spamhaus.org.
But now, SendSafe’s authors have installed a new feature that gives spammers another leg up in the spam arms race.
Linford, whose blacklist filters out 8 billion spam e-mails a day, says the feature could render services like his useless — and severely increase the already overwhelming amount of spam Internet users receive.
The feature allows spammers to make their zombie-sent e-mail appear as if it were sent directly from an Internet service provider’s systems. Since it’s not feasible to filter out an entire Internet provider’s e-mail, the new SendSafe program foils the entire blacklisting system, Linford says.
«Internet users are going to be flooded in spam,» Linford predicted. Spam is already about three-fourths of all e-mail, he said.
Internet spam can be filtered at many levels. Most users now have a junk e-mail folder, for example, where their Internet provider deposits messages deemed to be unwanted solicitations. But the filtering Spamhaus is describing occurs at the network level, which prevents spam e-mail from even getting inside an Internet provider’s systems.
Нет загрузок
