Spammers have jumped on the death of Michael Jackson and are sending out spam e-mails with the King of Pop in the subject line.
Many of the e-mails promise to have new songs or images of the recently deceased pop star, but in fact clicking on these attachments will open up malware on the recipient’s computer. So beware attachments that promise Michael Jackson memorabilia, they might also possess a botnet.
This trend has been common with spammers. We see it around holidays, we see it around elections and we see it around big news. Spammers are very savvy at keeping up-to-date and trying to play on popular public opinion to infect computers and send malware.
Botnets are growing in the spam world. For the past two months, spam levels have surpassed 90% of all e-mail and for legitimate marketers, this is a danger zone. And according to the latest report from MessageLabs, botnets are responsible for 80% of spam.
And like there are many kinds of spam, there are also many kinds of botnet spam. The five most common, according to MessageLabs include Cutwail, Mega-D, Xarvester, Donbot as well as Grum and Ronstock. These different kinds of botnets operate in varying ways to connect to an e-mail recipient’s PC and use their PC to send out malware.
