Chinese spammers are very adaptive to new Internet social mediums that might attract recipients’ interests in order to get Web hits. Spammers have done their research on popular social networking activities and living habits, thus setting up spam traps for possible hits.
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, also know as the Moon Festival, is one of the major holidays celebrated in Chinese society. It happens on August 15 in the Chinese lunar calendar, which is October 3 on the western calendar this year. Most families will get together to admire the bright full moon and eat mooncakes on this holiday.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Yes, Chinese love birds get to celebrate twice a year with their loved ones. Chinese Valentine’s Day is set to fall this year on July 7th in the lunar calendar—that’s August 26 on the western calendar.
The traditional Chinese Father’s Day is set on August 8—coming from “8/8”, which is pronounced “Pa-Pa” in Chinese. Spammers are offering us a wide array of gift selections, including high tech products, luxury wallets and watches for our hard working dads.
Based on the lack of coverage in recent weeks, some people may think that the swine flu epidemic has slowed down for a while. However, there have been many reports of deaths caused by swine flu in different countries around the world in the past couple of weeks. The general public is continuing to monitor news of this disease very closely.
We’ve observed spam disguised as a legitimate Taiwanese commercial bank sending out credit card promotion email messages that are embedded with an .swf virus link. In this particular attack, recipients are able to see the bank’s image at the top of the email message and promotion notes at the bottom.
We have recently observed Chinese spammers selling personal account cracking software. This is not a typical pirated software promotion, because it already violates privacy law. The observed email promises to teach and help users to break into others’ accounts such as MSN or Yahoo instant messaging clients accounts, email accounts, and all popular social networking accounts.
