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German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Mon May 16, 2005 at 06:00:42 PM EST
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My email box has been overflowing with German spam for a few days. Crooks and Liars tracked it down:

Direland has the scoop The racist spam that has flooded inboxes from Australia to Anaheim with hundreds of thousands of e-mails is designed to boost the NPD's score in elections this coming Sunday in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populated state. The Sober.Q virus, Der Spiegel says, is "the newest version of the Sober virus, a worm that infects address books and sends a copy of itself to all the entries. Various security firms have released warnings that they received hundreds of thousands of Sober.Q emails within the first 24 hours of the virus' outbreak."

Update: The news is now reporting on the growing problem.

< Newsweek: Investigation Is Needed, Not Retraction | John Conyers vs. Byron York >

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    German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming | 6 comments (6 topical)
    Re: German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming (none / 0) (#1)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:08 PM EST
    That's good to know...I have seen a huge amount of german based e-mails over the last couple of days and just figured I had hit on a german porn page(accidentally, of course) and was paying the price.

    Re: German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming (none / 0) (#2)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:08 PM EST
    I watched the worm spread as I received an ever-increasing amount of worm containing emails over the last three or four weeks and now my inbox is plugged with the resulting spam. I must say that politically motivated spam is a novelty at the moment.

    Re: German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming (none / 0) (#3)
    by DawesFred60 on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:08 PM EST
    Hey, Me to, over 200 in the last week. someone is doing somthing.

    Re: German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming (none / 0) (#4)
    by Beck on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:08 PM EST
    The worm itself does not send out spam email. The worm gives hackers control of infected computers. The hackers use this back-door access to install spam engines, and now they have instructed the infected computers to send out these spam emails. They can use the infected computers for any purpose they want. One common use is to send spam. Another is to launch denial-of-service attacks against Web sites. It used to be that computer virii caused damage to the computer for the amusement of the hacker, now the owner of an infected computer does not even know that the computer is infected, other than the computer seeming to run slowly because it is so busy pumping out spam.

    Re: German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming (none / 0) (#5)
    by pigwiggle on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:08 PM EST
    “now the owner of an infected computer does not even know that the computer is infected,” Interesting; kind of a chicken and egg thing. Someone aware enough to notice and remove worms, spyware, viruses, etc., generally isn’t going to become infected. Likewise, someone who is so clueless as to willy-nilly open email attachments, download Trojans, or run a high-bandwidth connection without a firewall isn’t going to notice they have been hijacked. I’ve never run anti-virus software (it makes my computer slow), instead I refrain from downloading viruses. A lot of folks get dirty doing stuff they shouldn’t; illegally downloading software key generators, cracked software, music, etc. Karma.

    Re: German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming (none / 0) (#6)
    by SeeEmDee on Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 12:59:09 PM EST
    keine Scheisse, bitte!

    German Spam is Becoming Overwhelming | 6 comments (6 topical)