Pharmacy spammer abusing small websites

I’m currently monitoring a high volume pharmacy spam campaign where the spammers have dropped a file onto many small legitimate country TLD websites. So far I’ve seen 150+ domains from all over the world being abused.

http://[legitimate domain].co.il/redir.html
http://[legitimate domain].de/redir.html
http://[legitimate domain].si/redir.html
http://[legitimate domain].es/redir.html
http://[legitimate domain].com.tw/redir.html

The file is called redir.html and simply redirects your browser to the spammers website.

Clicking on the link brings you to a Canadian Pharmacy website:

The majority are small business websites, personal websites and blogs. These are probably the least secure making it easier for the spammer to get the redirect file onto the site. Country tld domains are more likely to have a higher percentage of smaller local websites making it easier for the spammer to find ones that are not properly secured.

This is by no means a new technique but something I’d associate more with phishing. As a colleague just said, “the spammers are following the phishers for a change”. It highlights the need for properly secured websites no matter how big or small.