Trick or Treat: Internet Zombies Scare Up Halloween Spam

October 30, 2006; 03:40 AM
While children put the finishing touches on their costumes for tomorrow’s Halloween holiday, spammer-activated zombie networks have been busy sending out Halloween-related spam messages to unsuspecting Internet users. Commtouch (Nasdaq:CTCH), the leading OEM provider of anti-spam, Zero-Hour virus outbreak protection and IP Reputation services to messaging, security and networking companies, has identified thousands of Halloween-related spam attacks in recent days.

Spammers have found creative Halloween-related titles for traditional spam themes:

• “Absolutely single!!! Halloween matches!!!!!!” -- for dating/love spam
• “Super Halloween cash drawing … sign up now” -- for get rich quick/gambling
• Pharmaceutical spam turns into: “Check out our special limited time offers on prescriptions. Halloween”
• Self-help is now: “Smokers cough? Quit for life. Halloween”
• And Halloween is sometimes added for diversion: “We can fix your stamina in the bedroom. Halloween”

“Spammers hide behind the mask of anonymity on the Internet, taking advantage of the fact that unprotected end-users may be looking for Halloween-related messages,” said Amir Lev, Commtouch’s CTO. “One essential technique to see behind the spammers’ camouflage is to treat messages based on the reputation of the senders, rejecting those that have poor sender reputation. Since zombie-networks tend to come to life suddenly, and then die an equally rapid death, only a real-time IP Reputation solution can stay on top of the ever-changing zombie landscape. This, in conjunction with a content-agnostic spam filter, which ignores diversions like ‘Halloween,’ can provide an accurate and effective solution to the Halloween spam problem.”

About Commtouch

Commtouch Software Ltd. (NASDAQ:CTCH) is dedicated to protecting and preserving the integrity of the world's most important communications tool -- e-mail. Commtouch has over 15 years of experience developing messaging software and is a global developer and provider of proprietary anti-spam, Zero-Hour virus protection, and IP Reputation solutions. Using core technologies including RPD (Recurrent Pattern Detection™), the Commtouch Detection Center analyzes billions of email messages per month to identify new spam and malware outbreaks within minutes of their introduction into the Internet. Integrated by more than 50 OEM partners, Commtouch technology protects thousands of organizations, with over 50 million users in over 100 countries. Commtouch is headquartered in Netanya, Israel, and has a subsidiary in Mountain View, Calif. For more information, see: www.commtouch.com. The site includes the Commtouch online lab detailing spam statistics and charts.