Weblogs: Spam

Mimail-E - evidence of spammers

Monday, November 03, 2003

A new Windows Outlook virus is making the rounds again this week. Called Mimail-E this little worm does the usual Outlook thing, looking in a variety of places for email addresses to forward itself onwards. Two highlights of this package are:

Target: Antispammers

It comes as no surprise that the targets for the Denial of Service are Spamhaus, SpamCop and SPEWS. These three services are the backbone of the anti-spam group.

Who is behind the attacks

It is the general feeling in anti-spam circles that spammers are responsible for instigating these attacks. There's certainly motive - spammers gain by removing blacklist providers - a blacklist-free environment. We, the email users, don't benefit from the removal of blacklists.

Certainly, a significant number of spammers have criminal records - convictions for various types of fraud and theft, so embarking on another criminal action - of breaking into other people's computers and hijacking them for their own purposes is a natural step up the crime ladder.

Proof?

Previously there has been a problem proving beyond a reasonable doubt that spammers are behind these attacks. This doesn't seem to be the case any longer, as an interesting post from Steve Linford hints:

Spamhaus does know the two groups of spammers and teenage crackers behind the dDoS attacks, and we know the same groups are involved in the creation and sending of the viruses. We know who and where they are and will be releasing our information on them in a week's time to focus press on them in order to speed up their apprehension.

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