Cellopoint Bites Back at ZIP Spam

From text based spam to HTML, image to PDF, what’s the next?

August 1, 2007 Cellopoint Global Anti-spam Center (CGAC) announced the new ICA pattern for new type of ZIP spam. Following PDF spam, ZIP forms of spam have recently emerged, said by the head of CGAC. The ZIP spam contains a text or MS Office document with a stock promotion. Usually the attachment is no password protected; the mail Body is blank, and Subject might be the ZIP file name or empty.

Recipients must download the compressed file and decompress it then they are finally able to view the contents inside. The ZIP spam becomes a cumbersome email. Spammers sometimes also alter files types, like WINRAR disguised as ZIP. For those users cannot open them with the decompress tool built-in Windows, it takes much more time to cope with ZIP spam. The size of attachments is often small, but with mass inbound traffics would have huge effects in the whole mail system and the Intranet.

According to the report form Cellopoint on August 1, 2007, most of the recipients are not treating PDF and ZIP as spam before opening it. Spammers use social engineering variation to figure out how to reduce users’ psychological defense. Therefore, a breakthrough in the successful interception rate is higher than the Image spam. With various Anti-Spam products in support of resisting PDF spam, spammers increasingly adopt ZIP spam attacks. It’s easily bypassed by Anti-SPAM products. Users should be vigilant.

Founded in 2003, Cellopoint is a supplier of E-mail Security and Management. Headquartered in Taipei, Cellopoint has laboratories across Taipei and Hsinchu cities of Taiwan, collectively called Cellopoint Global Anti-spam Center (CGAC) that serve clients spanning small & medium enterprises (SME), large-scale firms, schools and government institutions, etc.