[LINK] Spammer trick could send junk email soaring

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

"News" =! "News to me"

Zombies aren't news. I will bet the zombies don't somehow query the ISP 
domain. You just get the zombie to send a message back to its source, 
and suck the ISP server's address out of the mail header. Wow, that was 
hard.

What's really said is that Cnet covered zombies a year ago, but got 
suckered by the New Scientist coverage and just had to jump on the 
bandwagon.

RC
Shameless plug: http://chirgwin.blogspot.com/

Antony Barry wrote:

> The following text is abstracted from  
> http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6968
>
> The number of junk email messages clogging inboxes could be set to 
> soar with spammers harnessing a new technique to churn out advertising 
> missives.
>
> Steve Linford, head of the UK anti-spam organisation Spamhaus, says 
> spammers are now using a clever trick to get around current 
> spam-blocking defences.  Instead of sending spam using illegitimate 
> mail servers, he says they are now routing messages through valid 
> servers via hijacked home computers.
>
> ...But the latest version of software used to remotely send spam from 
> hijacked computers could undermine the effectiveness of spam 
> blacklisting as it affects the whole mail server.
>
> After taking over a computer, these programs send a network query to 
> its internet service provider (ISP) to find the address of the host's 
> mail server.
>
> ...The trick means that spam cannot be blocked without restricting all 
> email sent from an affected ISP.  "It's cunning because to blacklist 
> ISPs would be a nightmare," says Mark Sunner, chief technology officer 
> at UK email filtering company MessageLabs.
>
> ...They can also use separate servers to send and collect email, which 
> should make it more difficult for spammers to identify the one used to 
> send emails.
>
> ..."ISPs are going to have to take a look at the structure of their 
> mail systems but that could be a lot of work," he told New Scientist.
>
> phone : 02 6241 7659 | mailto:me at Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
> mobile: 04 1242 0397 | http://tony-barry.emu.id.au
>
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