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As anti-spam tools and e-mail users become more sophisticated, spammers are turning to new mediums to get their unwelcome messages through filters and into inboxes. One of the more recent developments is spam with attached MP3 files. One security software vendor, MXSweep, is reporting that MP3 spam now accounts for between 7 and 10 percent of all spam being sent.
Arstechnica wrote:
The files are given innocuous-sounding names like elvis.mp3,oursong.mp3, smashingpumpkins.mp3, or coolringtone.mp3. The payload isdisappointing: a voice recording touting the virtues of some corporatestock; in other words, it's pump-and-dump stock spam in a new format.It's also a dumb idea. The overlap of those gullible enough to click onMP3 files of unknown provenance and those willing and able to invest ina stock that they've never heard of is certainly minute. It's bound tobe more of an annoyance than anything else and seems unlikely to resultin the desired stock purchases.
Attachment spam can be easily filtered, but the sheer size of themessages can cause headaches. The MP3 files currently used run from85KB to 147KB, according to MXSweep. "Although these emails now accountfor 8 percent of current traffic they consume up to 55 percent ofe-mail bandwidth use, which in business terms is a huge additionalcost," said Danny Jenkins, CTO and founder of MXSweep.
So far, security researchers haven't identified any malicious payloadsin any of the MP3 stock spam messages, so the biggest headache will beconfiguring spam filters to stop the MP3 message from hitting inboxes.That should be fairly easy for corporate IT departments who aren'talready stopping e-mails with audio attachments. If your e-mail clientsupports rules-based filtering, simply set it to flag and deletemessages with MP3 attachments.
The Federal Trade Commission believes legislation such as the CAN-SPAM Act and some high-profile convictionsare making a difference, but spammers have responded by moving more oftheir operations offshore, going deeper underground, and coming up withnew means of getting their unwelcome messages into inboxes.
Naturally, once countermeasures against MP3 spam are widely inplace, spammers will move on to another payload. That's why we'refacing MP3 spam now: anti-spam tools have become adept at dealing withimage spam (e.g., GIF and JPEG images attached to a message), PDF spam,and Excel spam. Just a few months ago, PDF spamaccounted for nearly 20 percent of all image spam; that number hassince plummeted to under 1 percent, according to e-mail securitycompany Proofpoint. Image-based spam has also plummeted to 2.23 percentof all messages as of the end of September.
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