Security Response

June 25, 2009 is a day that is etched in the memory of Michael Jackson fans worldwide. Jackson's death took a lot of people by surprise—the spammers included. However, it took spammers just a few hours to take advantage of this tragedy. Within hours, Symantec had discovered a mass-mailing worm and concert-ticket-offer spam messages using the news of Michael Jackson's death as bait. The worm was designed to send out spam emails with the subject “Remembering Michael Jackson” and an attachment named “Michael songs and pictures.zip.” The concert ticket offer spam messages were used to request recipients’ information in exchange for (bogus offers of) reimbursement for a ticket for the Michael Jackson concerts that were due to start July 13, 2009. In the weeks that followed, spam related to Michael Jackson easily exceeded President Obama-related spam and accounted for approximately two percent of all spam messages sent during this time. Michael...