It hasn't been long since reports surfaced that videos of Saddam Hussein’s execution are available for download on the Internet. It’s no surprise that enterprising malware creators have latched on to this latest news in an attempt to spread their wares.

What we have is an email spam sent to unsuspecting targets with details about where you can download a video.
Of course, this email (like past, present, and future spam) is once again taking advantage of human nature to help it spread. In this case, it is trying to appeal to the dark side of the individuals who are on the receiving end of the email.

The subject line of the email looks like this:

From: videosadan@kibeloco.com.br
Subject: Video completo da morte de Saddam Hussein

The body of the email looks like this:

...

We've noticed a tricky new spam tactic occurring recently and thought we'd share it with you. It’s always exciting when a new spamming technique comes along and it’s even more exciting when our filtering capabilities are successful against it. Most users running our product will not have seen this. Spam filtering can still protect you from this “new spam technique,” but, even if you have seen it or even opened it, you probably gave it a one-two glance and wondered “Eh? This isn't what I thought it was.”

The headers are legit – coming from a newsletter or ad that you have signed up for. You should be receiving this mail, right? Nope, it's a spam email. Look closer. There at the top of the page. It's an ad for something entirely different than what you thought was going to be in that email.

It's an online pharmacy ad within a legitimate NFL newsletter. That is really sneaky. It looks legitimate from your Inbox. You did sign up for that NFL...

Malware is becoming increasingly complex. Take Rustock.B for example: this threat goes above and beyond to prevent analysis and detection. A blog article is probably too small of a space to describe everything Rustock does technically, but you shouldn’t be surprised, considering its complexity, that Rustock has a clear financial motive. In particular, apart from hiding itself with advanced rootkit techniques, the primary goal of this threat is to send a lot of spam. Because we capture spam such as this, it allows us to update our email security products, such as Brightmail AntiSpam. In addition to pharmaceuticals, mortgages, and imitation product spam, Rustock has also sent stock-based spam. Stock-based spam usually consists of some random text, followed by an image, followed by more random text. Below is an example of one of the...

You are not alone. Practically everyone with an email account has encountered this problem. Image spam is everywhere these days and for the recipients it is a headache of fake Rolex, Chialis, and stock recommendations, to name only a few of the favorites. While antispam vendors mobilize to keep up with this new trend, the spammers infiltrate your Inbox.

The most frustrating thing is that these messages all look pretty much the same when reading them in your email. However, they are very different in the raw, which is why it makes the creation of effective filters much more difficult. Some of the techniques being employed by spammers to get these image-based ads into your Inbox are so subtle they are virtually imperceptible to the naked eye. These include, but are in no way limited to slight changes in text size and color, as well as image placement from one message to the next. The spammers keep utilizing more and more elaborate avoidance techniques to get...