The DOC is IN, Again, in Spam

January 2nd, 2008 by JM Hipolito (Technical Communications)

It’s the new year yet spammers are out with old tricks as TrendLabs Content Security (CS) researchers report that last year’s DOC spam is back. An effective means of getting through most antispam filters, DOC spam promotes low-cost pharmaceuticals using varying subject lines, messages, and attachment file names as shown in the images below:

This time around, the spam run has also taken to using security companies’ names, like McAfee as shown in the sample above, as well as Symantec’s Norton to feign credibility in their messages.

Below is a list of other commonly used signatures for the spammed messages:

DOC spam is an old news alright, but this newly employed name dropping technique might just provide its second wind. This a wake-up call for users who still don’t have anti-malware of their own set-up in their computers for, as this spam run proves, depending on the email scan results of your senders is depending on false security. Get yourself protected, shield your own inbox.