Next Generation Spam Zombies Will Use Data Mining

branewashd writes "The Globe and Mail is covering some new research on the future of spam. The paper 'Spam Zombies from Outer Space', from researchers at the University of Calgary, will be presented on Sunday at the European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research conference. According to the paper, the next generation of spam zombies will employ 'sophisticated data mining of their victims saved email'. When a computer is turned into a spam zombie, it will first be mined of its address book, mail client configuration, and mail archives. Then the spam program will use Natural Language Processing techniques to send spam messages to the victim's contacts that look a lot like messages that the user has previously sent. The researchers predict that this will be extremely hard to detect, but they do offer a few suggestions for combating it."

Comments

What if you don't have addresses?

[smooth wombat]

I don't use an email client on my machine. I log into my various email accounts and use the providers web interface. While I do have OE on my system it isn't configured and I've never used it. So I guess I'm not a target.

*sigh* I miss all the fun. No email client to be hijacked, don't have a cel phone to be infected with worms and I use Fx to surf so no ActiveX issues to worry about.

Guess there's only one thing left to do: laugh my ass off at everyone elses problems.