Norton Symantec Blog

Using news for Spam

Symantec report that one of the most recent tactics of Internet spammers is to send hoax email addresses containing false subject headings. A cunning trick is to take a well-known news event and post a sensational headline surrounding it. Examples of this can be seen below:

“Beijing Olympics Cancelled!�
“Beijing postpones Olympics due to McCain-Dalai Lama Meeting�
“McCain says unsure if Obama is a ‘secret’ hippopotamus�
“Kick-Up – Obama speaks in London – video�

By drawing people in and playing on general curiosity, spammers have enjoyed a good deal of success through these particular methods. By getting individuals to click on the links they can garner peoples’ personal details – such as email addresses – and in some cases they can plant tracking cookies onto personal desktops.

In many of the samples studied, the URLs were hosting malicious codes (known as malware or badware) and Symantec have deemed these particular threats to be dangerous. It is a further example of the fact that spammers are good at employing current events to hoax users into interacting with them. The message is that Internet users have to be constantly vigilant whilst online.