Spam is a serious problem for anyone who is tasked with managing an organization’s email services.

Annually, spam costs US businesses between $42 million and $50 million in lost productivity and other costs. And it’s not just large corporations that feel the sting when it comes to spam. It is estimated that a company with five employees will lose $16,180.40 and 8.125 work days of pro­duc­tiv­ity per year because of spam. A com­pany with 25 employees could stand to lose $80,902.00 and 40.62 work days per year due to having to deal with spam. Continue reading Is Your Website a Magnet for Email Spam?

This week, a Vietnamese security company reported discovery of a new worm, named W32.Gaptcha.Worm, which breaks Google’s CAPTCHA, and then automatically creates multiple random Gmail accounts which are then used for distributing spam.

The attack sends the new Gmail accounts out to hackers, who use them until Gmail blocks the IP address of the infected machine. According to the report, if your computer becomes infected, you will see Internet Explorer launch itself, and then the Gmail account registration process takes place, with the worm automatically filling in random names and numbers to manufacture a bogus user. The worm is able to circumvent Google’s CAPTCHA system by sending the CAPTCHA image to a remote server, where it is broken. Gmail will later block your computer, preventing you from signing up for any new legitimate Gmail accounts.

The blog entry that highlights the discovery doesn’t specify however, just how the CAPTCHA is broken once it has been sent to the remote server. It is believed that some spammers actually use low-tech means, sometimes even employing low-cost laborers in third world countries to decode CAPTCHAs by the thousand, by hand.

The company discovered the worm in a honeypot trap.

Reports are floating around that Hotmail’s CAPTCHA system is showing some weaknesses. Of course, this isn’t new business, but reports over the last week may be cause for more concern.

The CAPTCHA test is designed to prevent automated programs from logging into a system. In the past, Microsoft has made changes to the system, but it can still be broken. Spammers use this to create multiple email accounts for the purpose of sending out spam emails. Using a free webmail account like Hotmail is very desirable for spammers, since it is untraceable, and it won’t be blocked by a spam filter because the Hotmail domain enjoys a good reputation.

The most recent attacks are much more sophisticated, and include anti-detection techniques to prevent the attackers from being found. According to an EWeek article, the latest attack injects instructions into a compromised machine. The instructions, which are encrypted, include sign-up instructions with predefined credentials, and CAPTCHA-breaking instructions. the compromised machine commnicates with a host, which receives the CAPTCHA request, breaks it, and then sends it back to the compromised machine to complete the signup.