The Storm Worm botnet network may be shrinking in size, but it has managed to send out 15 million of those annoying audio spam messages in October, according to anti-spam vendor MessageLabs.
It’s hard to believe that the Storm messages were effective. Recipients had to first click on an attachment — usually given a misleading name such as beatles.mp3 or Britney.mp3 — to hear the stock pitch, which featured a warbly robotic woman advising people to invest in online car seller, Exit Only.
This kind of scam, called “pump and dump,” tries to nudge up the price of penny stocks by a cent or two, giving the spammers a way to make a quick buck by selling the stock before it crashes. Spammers have been delivering their messages in different formats, including PDF and Excel files, over the past few years as part of a cat-and-mouse game with spam blockers. This move to MP3 spam is the latest development in this battle, observers say.
Storm Worm, Botnet, Malware, Spam, Audio Spam, Email Spam
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