Rehashing old tricks
Over the past few weeks, spammers have started to adopt PDF files as the carrier of spammy content. In this type of spam, it is the PDF file attached that contains the actual spammy message enticing people to purchase all kinds of questionable products. Starting out with pump-and-dump stock scams, moving on to pitching medications, it will not be long before all the usual culprits are onboard using PDF spam in an attempt to bypass mail filters.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, spammers are still deploying their old anti-anti-spam techniques in PDF spam so commonly used in HTML and text based spam. Today’s stock pump-and-dump PDF spam campaign used the mainstay (well one of them anyway) of such techniques, the ol’ hash buster:
Spam is certainly evolving however old tricks live on.
Posted on July 18th, 2007 by Sean McDonald, SophosLabs, AustraliaFiled under: Spam
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