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Massive MP3 Spam Outbreak Hits Users; Constitutes 7-10% of Global Spam
(Market Wire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) NEWBURYPORT, MA, October 22 / MARKET WIRE/ --
Cyberoam, a leading provider of
identity-based Unified Threat Management solutions, today announced a
massive outbreak of a new spam variant -- the MP3 attachment spam. This new
spam tactic began at 21:24 GMT on October 17, 2007 and has been flooding
users, accounting for around 7-10% of all global spam.
The MP3 files in the spam mails are voice messages promoting stocks.
Spammers are innovating constantly to find new ways of making money and MP3
spam is yet another progression in this innovation. As was the case with
PDF spam mails, MP3 spam mails have also been highly randomized in order to
avoid email filters.
"Attackers are always in search of new variants to target users," said
Joshua Block, Vice President of North American Operations, Cyberoam
Identity-based UTM. "MP3 spam promoting stocks has been flooding users
after image, PDF and excel spam. This outbreak is another instance of the
financial nature of attacks and lends credence to the fact that spam is no
longer just a nuisance."
The categories of file names include emotional songs, such as dadsong.mp3,
oursong.mp3, weddingsong.mp3; as well as popular songs from famous artists
like santana.mp3, sayyousayme.mp3, smashingpumpkins.mp3, bbrown.mp3,
bspears.mp3, gloriaestefan.mp3, beatles.mp3, and other random sounds, such
as answeringmachine.mp3, coolringtone.mp3 and listentothis.mp3. No viral
threat has been identified so far in these messages.
According to Block, "The strength of the new variants is that users are
caught unaware. By the time warnings arrive, the particular variant is
already on the decline and attackers are looking for another, unsuspected
application to target users with."
The MP3 spam messages have been found to be much larger than "traditional"
spam, even larger than their predecessors -- image spam and PDF spam. The
average size of the message is 85KB, but has reached up to 147KB. The
message contents have been found to be mostly empty, and in most cases, the
subjects contain just "Fwd:" or "Re:" or the name of the file attachment.
According to industry sources, the estimated cost of spam to the global
economy is approximately $25 billion per year, causing financial and
productivity loss for service providers, enterprises and end-users alike.
The format of spam attacks has evolved to manipulate and escape anti-spam
solutions available in the industry. The objective is fulfilled by the use
of sophisticated techniques, which keep changing to evade existing spam
detection applications.
To combat rapidly evolving spam mails from reaching inboxes, enterprises
need zero-hour solutions for early detection and real-time blocking of spam
outbreaks. Cyberoam's anti-spam solution is an answer for proactive defense
against such spam outbreaks.
As Cyberoam does not rely on the contents of the email, it is able to
detect spam in any language and in every message format, non-English
characters, single and double byte, etc. Its language- and content-agnostic
nature enables it to provide effective spam blocking from image-based spam
against the present onslaught of MP3 spam.
The technology makes Cyberoam anti-spam solution highly scalable, enabling
it to deliver extremely high performance rates by analyzing millions of new
patterns each day, (24x7x365). New outbreaks are identified within minutes
from the time they are launched on the Internet globally.
To learn more about Cyberoam's anti-spam solution and its unique
identity-based UTM solutions, please contact Rebecca Paquette at
cyberoam@shiftcomm.com, or visit www.cyberoam.com.
About Cyberoam
Cyberoam, a division of Elitecore, is a leading innovator of identity-based
Unified Threat Management appliances offering a comprehensive range of
security features, including identity-based firewall, VPN, gateway
antivirus, gateway anti-spam, intrusion detection and prevention, content
filtering, as well as bandwidth management and multiple link management --
all over a single platform. Cyberoam offers robust Internet security to
corporations, educational institutions and government organizations
worldwide, and its solutions are certified by the ICSA Labs, an independent
division of Verizon Business, and the Virtual Private Network Consortium.
Cyberoam's solutions have also received the 2007 Global Excellence Awards
for Integrated Security Appliance, Security Solution for Education and
Unified Security, and the 2007 Tomorrow's Technology Today Award for
Unified Security. Cyberoam has offices in the Newburyport, MA and India.
For more information, please visit www.cyberoam.com.
About Elitecore Technologies
Elitecore Technologies Limited is a leading provider of convergent billing,
provisioning and customer acquisition solutions, and Unified Threat
Management Solutions. Elitecore's divisions include Crestel, meeting the
voice, data, video billing and customer care requirements of tier-one
service providers; and Cyberoam, the leading innovator of identity-based
UTM solutions that offers integrated Internet security with fine
granularity through unique user identity-based policies. Elitecore was
established in 1999 by Eclipse Micro Computer Inc., and possesses a strong
R&D base and support center based in India, allowing the Company to sustain
a healthy growth rate of more than 75 percent since inception. For more
information, please visit www.elitecore.com.
Copyright 2007 Market Wire, Incorporated
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