Spammers may “train” zombie computers to imitate and unleash spam that closely resembles the writing style of the compromised PC owner.
Associate Professor of Computer Science John Aycock and student Nathan Friess at the University of Calgary in Canada discovered that cybercriminals can trick nearly every spam filter after gathering enough personal information from the computer, such as email writing style, message length, capitalization habits, abbreviations, and signatures.
Aycock and Friess pointed out that the main reason spam filters and users recognize spam is: “Spam usually originates from unidentified sources and appears to be unreliable. However, this new ‘premium’ spam will change the landscape of spam thanks to the data they have obtained.”
Aycock also emphasized: “Zombie systems are not just a launching pad for denial-of-service attacks or spam distribution. They also contain a massive amount of information.”
For more details, see John Aycock’s report here.
T.N.
