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Re: [Asrg] Is this a new spam form?

2003-04-01 03:53:40
On Tuesday, Apr 1, 2003, at 05:27 Europe/London, Kee Hinckley wrote:

I have heard people talk of viruses/trojans which either sent spam directly, or used the user's account to signup for free accounts on webmail sites and sent spam using those. But I've only heard those in the friend-of-a-friend market.

There was an e-greetings trojan (technically it wasn't a trojan, it was a test of how closely you read a EULA) which sent greeting card messages to everyone in your address book. I've also heard that it sent a copy of your address book to the company who set it up--but I haven't seen that officially reported anywhere. (The fact that the software did what it said it was going to do kind of threw the anti-virus companies in a quandry. Some blocked it, some did not. The company sending the stuff had to switch servers several times too, since their ISP's weren't so friendly. Last I heard they had a server in Panama.)

On the illegal fringes of spam I suspect that regular collaboration of virus writers and spammers is only a matter of time. It's good money for the script kiddies. Most likely I would expect the virus not to carry the spam payload directly, but to pick it up from a newsgroup or some such.

The virus in question is (was?) Trojan.Win32.Rewt. A spam sending trojan. But I don't expect we'll see many more of those - it's *very* illegal to write a trojan - the feds *will* lock you up for it. Especially in these times of heightened security everywhere. I'd be very surprised if spammers went to these lengths.

Matt.

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