PDF Spam Levels Plummet
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After reaching a peak of nearly 30 percent, PDF spam is now less than 1 percent of all spam messages sent.
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US authorities said yesterday computer users everywhere could notice a decrease in junk email after the arrest of a man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers.
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The flaws disclosed last week in Adobe System&#39;s Reader and Acrobat programs have been used to exploit computers since at least January via malicious banner advertisements, security analysts are reporting.Adobe issued patches&#160;last Wednesday for Reader and Acrobat, but the company did not detail the flaws.Problems with Adobe&#39;s software can potentially affect millions of PC users, since the company&#39;s software is widely used to read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Most people regard PDFs as harmless.&quot;From our standpoint, it appears that this PDF-based attack has been quite successful, affecting many thousands of users throughout the world,&quot; wrote Hon Lau on Symantec&#39;s Security Response Weblog.Greg McManus of iDefense Labs, the security arm of VeriSign, reported one of the vulnerabilities to Adobe in October, according to a post by the SANS Institute, a computer security organization.Since hackers have been apparently using the Adobe flaws since January, it raises the question how they discovered the flaw.Lau wrote that the &quot;swiftness of the exploit appearing in the wild suggests that leaks had occurred.&quot;However, it appears that the vulnerabilities in Reader and Acrobat were disclosed in a responsible way, Lau wrote.The flaws in the programs allow a hacker to create a malicious PDF document. If opened by a victim, that document downloads a malicious Trojan that Symantec calls &quot;Zonebac.&quot;Zonebac was first detected in 2006. It shuts off a user&#39;s security software as well as downloads other bad software. The latest version also appears to taint search engine results, Lau wrote.In January, iDefense noticed that the malicious PDF document was being delivered through malicious banner advertisements. Symantec&#39;s Lau wrote that it&#39;s not immediately clear how the PDF file is delivered, but that the banner ads could be redirecting people to other harmful Web sites with the file. Also, spam messages may be carrying the bad file as an attachment.Malicious banner ads can be particularly dangerous since the ads can show up on legitimate Web sites. Online advertising companies have struggled to keep these ads off their networks. Sometimes, hackers will approach the networks with what is a legitimate ad and then substitute it for a malicious one. Many of those bad ads have exploited vulnerabilities in Adobe&#39;s Flash multimedia technology.Adobe&#39;s Reader and Acrobat are designed to regularly look for updates, but users are advised to upgrade to the patched version, 8.1.2.&#160;
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It might be too early to celebrate, but according to Symantec&#39;s numbers, the rate of increase of internet spam is easing a bit.
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To curb spam, getting your Hotmail via Outlook/Express won&#39;t be free much longer ... posted 12:49pm EST Tue Sep 28 2004 - submitted by Christopher R. Anderson.
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A common spamming technique of sending unwanted e-mail pitches as image attachments rather than text is on the decline, as spammers continue adapting their methods for sneaking past e-mail filters.
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Spam makes sense. Sure, most of it reads like filthy gibberish. But the authors of this dreck are not semi-literate perverts. They're cool, rational business folk who have found a sleazy but effective way to make a buck.
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Duff note Stock spammers have abandoned PDF files and image spam with a new campaign featuring MP3 files.â¦
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AOL believes spammers are starting to give up - at least when it comes to sending junk to its subscribers. The total number of spam complaints from AOL members fell more than 75% last month.
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Just when experts thought the spam tide was receding, it did what tides will do. The problem's worse than ever, and image-based attacks using artificial intelligence are to blame.
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Back-to-school sales and political pitches helped spur latest barrage of spam.
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Plus: Most email over holidays will be spam. [News.com Extra]
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Bill Gates was wrong: Junk e-mail is clogging inboxes faster than ever. In Furthermore.
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A screensaver targeting spam-related websites appears to have been too successful.
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Much of the trouble centered on phishing, a type of attack where fake Web pages are constructed to harvest log-in details, credit card numbers or other personal information. And, oh yes, spam is back.
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America Online said yesterday that it has seen a substantial decline in unsolicited e-mails this year, though some anti-spam experts said the company may be the only Internet provider experiencing such a drop-off.
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Spam deluge eclipses virus email threat The number of viruses hitting Irish inboxes has fallen but spam continues to rise, according to figures from IE Internet.â¦