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Spyware littering the global spam landscape
Sandra Rossi, Computerworld

14/10/2003 11:53:24

Outside of the usual financial scams, medical miracles and pornography
that makes up the bulk of unsolicited e-mail, a new trend has emerged
where spammers are spruiking spyware to monitor partners, children and
employees.

The product allows users to spy on anyone by simply sending an e-greeting
card. For example, a wife can send a harmless e-greeting to her husband
and once it is opened she can monitor all of his e-mails, chatroom
messages and passwords.

The spyware spam is certainly spreading according to this month's Spam
Index from Clearswift, an e-mail management software provider with 16
million users worldwide.

Clearswift Asia Pacific managing director Chy Chuawiwat said spyware is
particularly nasty because the e-mail or greeting usually comes from a
trusted source.

"The spam is encouraging people to spy on people they know, by tricking
them into opening an attachment. This is a real threat to the personal
privacy of individuals and particularly to the security of information in
organisations," he said.

"Organisations need a multi-layered approach to spam filtering. At the
network layer, organisations should use real time blacklists, anti-relay,
domain verification and local block lists. Then at the content layer,
organisations should apply textual analysis of content and deploy service
feeds that provide regular updates on new spam content patterns.
Additionally, organisations should apply policy-based spam filtering
based on sender and recipient groups."

Direct product selling including the new spyware offers made up 23 per
cent of spam intercepted in September according to the Spam Index.

This was closely followed by pornography and finance deals both at 22 per
cent.