ANN ARBOR ? Spam accounted for 95 percent of email traffic in 2007, including attack strategies not seen in previous years, so says SpamStopsHere, an email filtering solution created by Greenview Data.
Spammers were in full throttle last year developing new spamming techniques. Phishing attacks rose dramatically, worms threatened millions, and overall spam levels hit an all time high.
Spammers grew increasingly brazen and diverse in their attack strategies. We saw attack strategies that have not typically been seen in previous years. Spammers experimented with attaching encoded messages in different file formats such as MP3, Zip, Excel, Word and PDF. MP3 spam proved to be interesting, but short lived. Spammers attached MP3 files which were named after popular recording artists and songs. After a recipient had opened the attachment, an electronically enhanced voice delivers a message promoting a stock for a particular company. Many wonder if iPod spam could be next.
2007 was also the year of the “Worm.” The Storm Worm blew through
inboxes like a hurricane. Spammers unleashed the Storm Worm in early 2007
in emails claiming to have information about storms in Europe. The Storm
worm was devised to infect PCs for the purpose of sending spam, or as a
host computer that is capable of infecting other PCs. Experts have
estimated the number of infected PCs could be as high as 10 million.
Phishing scams also reached critical levels. Banking, IRS, eBay and
PayPal phishing attacks rose dramatically in 2007. SpamStopsHere recommends
the following guidelines when confronted with a suspected phishing attack.
1. If an email asks you to log-in to your bank, PayPal, eBay or other
personal account, assume it is a phishing scam.
2. Never enter banking information, social security numbers or other
sensitive information into any web site that resulted from clicking a link
in an email.
3. Never enter your computer user name and password into any email that
requests it, not even if it claims to be from your IT manager or other co-
worker. It is easy for a spammer to forge the sender’s name.
4. If you unsure as to the legitimacy of a particular email, open an
internet browser and manually type in the URL of the institution in
question, e.g. “www.chase.com”. Do not use the URL in the email as a
reference, as it may be a forgery.
“2007 was a challenging year for the antispam industry and a phenomenal
year for us,” said Ted Green, President of SpamStopsHere. “With spam
reaching such critical levels, our customer base has grown substantially
due to the simple fact that many of our competitors have difficulty keeping
their antispam solutions up to date with the latest spam campaigns.
SpamStopsHere has a team of technicians that review spam 24 hours, seven
days a week. This allows us to update our system every minute and block the
latest spam campaigns.”
For more information, click on GreenViewData.Com
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