New Spam Delivery Method Discovered

A new spam delivery method has been discovered by IceWarp, a messaging products developer. The method is used by cyber criminals to break anti-spam defences and attack personal computers globally, the company announced.

IceWarp’s security experts have noticed that hackers are stealing e-mail addresses and passwords from outside connection points and using them to enter corporate e-mail systems. Their analysis showed that hackers usually take advantage of the fact that a large number of users have the same password for their corporate e-mail addresses and their social media accounts. That carelessness provides opportunities for the attackers even if they are only able to steal a few passwords. The recent hacking attack on daily deals platform LivingSocial proves that hackers have immediately used stolen passwords to hack corporate e-mail addresses.

Antonin Prukl, IceWarp technical director, explains that e-mail accounts are decomposed in two stages. The domain is used to look up the server using the DNS MX record and the username authorises the user to access the mail server. Once attackers access the server, they search the IMAP folder and send spam from the same server to the user’s contacts. Such a method makes spam attacks very effective, as usually the sender is on the recipients’ server white list, which makes them unlikely to be suspicious. These spam attacks are nearly impossible to stop or detect, but what administrators can do is to force users to change passwords at the first indications of such an attack.