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IM And Image Spam On The Rise
Chris Crum
Staff Writer
2006-07-14
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Attacks on IM systems are on the rise as email attacks gradually decrease according to Integrated Message Management company Postini.
The company's monthly "Message Security & Management Update" for June shows that there is a growing number of hackers attacking corporate networks through IM.
It also shows that many hackers are using "Image Spam" using popular events such as the World Cup to initiate their attacks. Postini says in a press release:
In June, Postini identified and prevented new IM malware attacks from infecting desktop PCs, including Worm.pic-myspace-info, an annoying worm that lures victims to a website from where the worm installs itself on a user's machine, infects the victim's IM client, and then replicates itself as an IM message to all of the victim's "buddy list" members. Postini also protected its clients using Yahoo! Messenger from the Secunia/Yahoo.dos.vuln worm which launches denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, crashing other users' Yahoo! Messenger clients with floods of messages.
World Cup spam and image-only spam containing pornography and stock offers were common in June. After declining steadily throughout 2005 (from about 12 percent of all spam down to about 5 percent, with some fluctuations), the use of image spam jumped dramatically in December 2005, to 25 percent of all spam, where it has remained since.
The company says that many spammers are converting their normal text spam to images, as they can sneak through filters easily.
Tags: spam, instant messaging
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About the Author:
Chris Crum is a staff writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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