Spammers find
'small' way to beat email filters
When
a group of hackers sought to steal iTunes passwords from Apple customers in France,
they didn't spam the entire country. They sent out just 5,000 e-mails to
French-speaking targets containing links to a fake login page.
The
attack, which took place in October, was a success, at least by spamming
standards. Most of the e-mails found their way to their intended recipients'
inboxes, a rare occurrence with today's sophisticated spam filters. Agari Data,
a cyber-security company, said more spammers are adopting this kind of
small-batch approach, known in the industry as 'snowshoe' spam (the name refers
to the small footprints it leaves), in the hope of breaking through junk-mail
blocking software.
In
the French iTunes case, attackers were able to operate their e-mail scam for
eight hours before automated filters began to catch on, Agari said. They used
e-mail accounts hosted through a small Belgian cloud company that wasn't a
known offender.
As
artisanal spam becomes a problem, the cyber-security industry is pushing for
adoption of new protections that could save our in-boxes. One, called DMARC, is
a global registry that lets retailers and other companies register the servers
they use to send the kind of mass mailers some people enjoy receiving.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Librarian
Khaitan
& Co
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