Technically sophisticated porn spam scam uncovered
Spammers and scammers are getting frighteningly sophisticated. "More than a thousand unsuspecting Internet users around the world have recently had their computers hijacked by hackers, who are using them as pornographic Web sites. The hijacked computers, which are chosen by the hackers apparently because they are linked by high-speed connections to the Internet, are secretly loaded with a software program that makes them transmit explicit Web pages advertising pornographic sites. . . . The hackers operating the ring direct traffic to each hijacked computer in their network for only a few minutes at a time, quickly rotating through a large number. . . . By hiding behind a ring of machines, the senders can cloak their identities while helping to solve one of the biggest problems for purveyors of pornography and spam: getting shut down by Internet service providers who receive complaints about the raunchy material." The same system was being used to run a fake PayPal scam, sending email that directed the recipients to "update" their PayPal credit card info on a spoofed site. More.
