Inboxes groan under weight of billions of bogus e-mails

Published on Tuesday 28 November 2006 00:41

EVERY day, 1.5 million e-mails are sent to staff and students at Edinburgh University from the outside world - but only 125,000 of those prove to be genuine.

The rest is spam, the glut of electronic junk mail offering a range of dubious products from cheap Viagra to stock market tips or sexual services which now inundates companies and individuals on a daily basis.

Research released yesterday suggests that of the 30 million e-mails sent to UK addresses every day, 24 million are junk.

Edinburgh University, which has about 20,000 computers, is a prime target as it possesses high-speed internet connections and its own servers.

Brian Gilmore, the university's head of computer services, said: "You are fighting a running battle with these people [spammers]. At the same time we have to balance security with the needs of students and staff to communicate."

Internet security company SurfControl said yesterday it had detected a 50 per cent rise in the number of spam mails sent in Britain since July. It says gangs are increasingly expert in hijacking computers to send innocent people e-mails - potentially harnessing huge numbers of machines - and that spammers are finding new ways to outwit software filters.

The latest trend is to scramble a message - for example offering prescription drugs online - with a picture, making detection difficult.

Harnish Patel, from SurfControl, said: "It is possible for a spamming gang to send tens of millions of messages a day. I don't see any limit to this problem, it is something we are just trying to keep pace with."

Other Scots companies report a similar experience. The Scottish Parliament receives one million e-mail messages a month, of which 70 per cent are spam. Scottish Media Group is sent 1.7 million a month, of which one million are bogus. Mark Sichi, SMG's IT systems manager, said: "There has been an increase in the cleverer type of spam e-mail."

Britain is not unique in experiencing a spam explosion. The US Technology firm Postini said it had detected seven billion spam e-mails worldwide in November, compared to 2.5 billion in June.

Computer users can open their machines to hijackers when they unwittingly infect their computers with "trojan- horse" programs - so called because they often hide behind an innocent application, such as a piece of software or music downloaded from the web.

Most big organisations use sophisticated e-mail filters which in practice root out the majority of spam messages. However, the spammers use an ever-evolving range of devices to fool the electronic gatekeepers. These include misspelling words, embedding text in images or using swathes of words taken from classic books to create confusion in corporate e-mail filters.

Matt Loney, editor of technology news website Zdnet, said that while nearly all big companies had spam e-mail filters in place, users could also help by exercising common sense.

"If you see a message from someone you don't know or a bank you're not a customer of, don't click on any attachments in the message, and delete it."

Growing menace from east of Europe

ABOUT 80 per cent of the world's spam e-mail is generated by some 200 gangs.

According to Spamhaus, an organisation based in London, spam sent from eastern Europe is an increasing problem.

The group's top ten of the world's worst spammers lists four Russians, two Ukrainians, two Americans, a Hong Kong company and one in Israel. The most sophisticated gangs can send 100 million messages a day.

Increasingly, spammers hack into other machines and covertly install "malware" - software programs that take over the PC - to send messages for them.

The malicious software programmes are able to log keyboard motions to harvest passwords and other details which they then relay back to the criminal gangs.

Richard Cox, of Spamhaus, said: "I suspect the UK law authorities really don't appreciate the extent of the problem."

Spammers can use different means to glean e-mail addresses, including scouring internet forums and message boards.

The worst thing recipients can do is reply and ask to be taken off the list - that simply signals to the spammer that the address is a genuine one.

ONLINE BOMBARDMENT

SPAMMERS use junk e-mail because it is one of the cheapest forms of mass marketing available - just five or six computers connected in a home can send millions of messages at minimal cost. If just two or three people out of 10,000 buy what claims to be Viagra, for example, the spammers have made a profit. They are indifferent as to whether huge numbers of their e-mails are deleted.

While some messages offer products, however dubious, others are simply online frauds. The Nigerian 419 gangs, who promise huge sums in return for temporary use of bank accounts, were early converts to e-mail.

Another con involves so-called "phishing" e-mails. They appear to come from a bank or money transfer company such as PayPal, but are bogus and intended to steal personal and financial details. The latest variant is "spear phishing" in which fraudsters watch companies for new arrivals, then write to them, purporting to be from the IT department, to request personal details.