Comments on: PDF Spam Outbreak

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:02:29 +0000

Emails are on of the most popular method in terms of spamming. Although it is easy to delete the Spam Emails after they are being received yet it is very difficult to filter such emails. Especially if they contain PDF Spams. Spam Filtering may reduce the number of spams for a short while but you cant say that it is an ultimate solution to Spamming. The reason is that the Spammers are aware of these filtering techniques whether it is Filtering with BogoFire, Spamassasin or some other. There are many websites available that are providing the information on Email-Spamming Solutions but most of this information is either irrelevant or not useful. I have recently visited a website that is Anti-Spamming Info Website It contains useful information regarding Spams, Email-Spam, Spam Filtering as well as different kind of Spams that are used.

By: Josh

Josh — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 16:06:47 +0000

The pdf emails seem to be subsiding a little bit. I’ve some success with spambully and spambayes, but a few of these are still going to slip through the cracks.

By: Henrik Soke

Henrik Soke — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:31:26 +0000

Yeah, my Outlook 2003 takes care of them all too But they are sooo annoying.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:14:34 +0000

I Hate Spam 4 has been doing a great job for me. Totally happy with the performance (even on these .pdfs it’s 90%+ effective).

By: Nick Kelly

Nick Kelly — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 18:34:12 +0000

Ted Wood, unfortunately they did get smarter and there are several variants of this type of spam now.

Randy W, spam filters work in different ways and some do/did attempt to do OCR on the image spam. As you mention the spammers then added wavy/discoloured text to attempt to break the character recognition. I’m not sure if any anti-spam filters attempt OCR on the PDF files, I would assume not. Image based character recognition is extremely slow compared to other methods of detection and there are other signatures in the image/PDF file and the email that can be used to detect this type of spam more efficiently.

Mike/ Rick, our current stats for this type of spam match yours, the volume has increased by about 6x since the first campaigns of this type of spam.

By: Miles

Miles — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:55:04 +0000

I use MailWasher Pro which has been catching 99.5%. This morning 224 spams, 14 with PDF’s. Only 2 spams, and wihtout attachments, were not listed as spam but were questioned, and I simply checked the “enemy” box.

It takes a couple of weeks to put this program through it’s learning curve, but after that all is fine. Just don’t add them to the blacklist, else opening the program will be very slow. (I simply leave it open all day in the background) Incidentally I also use Thunderbird and it is catching about the same number. As opposed to Att/yahoo on line, of which 8 this morning were in the inbox to be moved to the spam folder.

By: Russell Stevens

Russell Stevens — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:57:00 +0000

I’m a tech who services several small businesses. I can honestly say I’ve seen this and other .pdf spam at least 200 times in the last two weeks. Most of it doesn’t claim to have any connection to McAfee.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 13:25:23 +0000

I make it a habit not to open .zip files or .PDF filles I get in e-mail. Lord knows what is in them until you open them and if you do open them,the surprise might not be pleasant.

By: John H

John H — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 02:11:59 +0000

I am using outlook 2007 with all updated spam filter from Microsoft as well as windows onecare and I am getting absolutely bombed with these damn PDF spams. Where is Microsoft on this anyway?? I see 20 to 30 a day. Can anyone recommend a REAL filter??

Thanks!

By: Packets

Packets — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 01:28:27 +0000

Is this a reason to update to Adobe Reader 8.0.1?