With more people using the Internet now than ever before, free homepage hosting providers are increasing in popularity. These sites offer users free Web space so that they can make their own homepage, publish it, and share with friends and family. When the popularity of this type of service was near its peak, spammers began to use these websites as part of their spamming efforts. This was accomplished through the creation of many free websites, often using automation, and sending spam with a newly created webpage URL. The randomization of such URLs hindered typical anti-spam efforts. When an unsuspecting user clicked on one of these newly created URLs, more often than not they were taken to a page similar to the one shown here:
While this spam material (online pharmacy spam) is nothing new, the page that contains the actual spam content resides underneath the layer of a legitimate Web hosting site. Therefore, this technique presents a challenge to basic anti-spam efforts.User groups provide users a shared space in which they can conduct various activities. These include blogs, link postings, and discussion forums. Many years ago we witnessed spammers attempting to exploit this by sending a spam message to the master group email address. This in turn relayed that message to all members of the group. When system providers caught up to this abuse, spammers simply made their own groups and started to spam using links like this one:
The Internet is slowly evolving to become a more collaborative space. One prominent website provides a free service that enables users to share documents with one another. This allows one central location of a file, which makes attaching the same document over and over again via email obsolete. As popularity of this service rises, Symantec is observing an increase in attacks using links such as this:
The Internet has and will continue to provide us with interconnectivity and the many conveniences that come with it. However, our examples have demonstrated that spammers are always trying to take advantage of new features for their personal profit. Sharing is caring, even in the world of spam.