US politicians lean on spam to promote campaigns

 

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By Matt Whipp

Posted on 9 Nov 2006 at 16:02

As the fate of US politics spins out in the mid-term elections, security specialist Sophos notes that campaigners are going to extraordinary lengths to boost turnout at the polls. Even inanimate objects are being urged to take part.

So zealous have the parties been on the campaign trail that Sophos's network of honeypot servers, designed as easy prey for virus writers and spammers to provide the company with a snapshot of malicious online activity, have been sent emails supporting both the Republican and Democrat camps.

'A Sophos spamtrap is not a legitimate US voter, so why did it receive emails telling it to vote in the mid-term elections?' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. 'Given that the internet is already being clogged up with spam, do we really need US politicians adding to the problem by indiscriminately sending out these unwanted messages?'

The UK company says that because US politicians enjoy privileges that mean they are not bound by the CAN-SPAM Act, they can send out unsolicited campaign emails.

The emails include certain CAN-SPAM compliant elements such as having real email addresses and unsubscribe links, 'but in our opinion, it's still spam,' said Cluley.

The real legal doubt surrounding this is exactly how the campaign troops got hold of the honeypot email addresses in the first place.

'We do "help" publish the honeypot email addresses,' said Cluley. 'They appear on bulletin boards and forums ... but they are not owned by humans, and they never requested to receive such information.'

The only means by which the campaigners might have obtained the addresses is by scanning the Internet for anything with an @ sign in it: a technique known as 'harvesting'. The practice breaches the CAN-SPAM Act, and although US politicians may be able to act outside those rules, the world really doesn't need any more spam.

Cluley claims there has been a huge spike in spam volumes over the past two months, with the US bearing the brunt. He puts this down to the 'success' of the Stratio email worm, also known as Stration and Warezov. With in excess of 2,000 variants, the worm has proved adept at infecting computers and turning them into spam relays. So much so, that the US is the top spamming country and increasing the gap between it and China in second place.