CSC 379 SUM2008:Week 1, Group 3

DUE FRIDAY 11:30PM

Spam

Spam is disruptive or unwanted message sent to a user especially through email, often in bulk. It is often sent as advertisements or scams, but sometimes it's purpose is just to annoy. There is little or no cost to spamming and the methods to do so are relatively simple, which accounts for its persistence over the years.

History

The term spam is believed by most to be coined by a Monty Python Skit. In the skit a group of vikings start singing a song about spam that drowns out the rest of the conversation. Users of MUD groups would fill the screen of other users with the lyrics to the spam song to discourage users from chatting. This became referred to as spamming.

The first commercial spam was by a lawyer group called Canter and Siegel. At the beginning of the internet, USENET was a system that had many different discussion groups that were very useful for gathering and discussing specific information. On April 12, 1994, Canter and Siegel hired a programmer to write a script that would post their add to every single USENET group. Soon after this other people started mass posting irrelevant ads and then people discovered that they could send unwanted emails over email.

Types

Phishing

Phishing is the fradulent process of obtaining sensative information, generally passwords and logins. Phishing generally takes place in E-mails and instant messages. Email phishing consits of the attacker creating a "look a-like" of a login page to a secure website. When the user puts in thier login information, it is sent to the attackers computer, where the attacker can gain access to personal information and money accounts. Notable phishing attacks have occured on eBay, Youtube, and many online banks.

Methods

Zombie

Spam is increasingly sent from computers and users that have no idea that they are in fact sending unwarranted and sometimes illegal material to thousands of other users. An unprotected computer becomes a zombie when a virus or worm is sent not to disable or damage data on the machine but to utilize its own resources. This allows both bandwidth and processing power outside the physical mean of the individual sending the spam to output many times what one machine could produce. A zombie computer also creates spam from thousands and possibly millions of sources that is highly untraceable back to the one source of the spam for prosecution.

The term zombie is used to refer to such machines due to the fact the that local user usually has no idea that their machine is under the control of another. Typically zombie computers are used to distribute e-mail spam but can also be used to host phishing servers, performing click fraud, as well as money mule websites.

It is estimated that currently the large majority of e-mail spam is now sent via zombie computers.

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Anything else?

The tactics and content of spam are continuously changing as countermeasures to combat it become more effective. Once simple advertisements, spam now comes in a wide variety of forms from phishing, to “pump and dump” stock scams, to other deceptive business offers. Examine the current nature of spam content and tactics, providing an overview of each major type of spam, a brief review of the ethical considerations each raise, and links to online resources that cite specific instances or effects of each.