New Spam Attack Delivers Audio Stock Pitches

Stock tip spammers have a new ploy to dupe you into listening to their pitches. According to Web security firm MessageLabs spammers are tricking people into opening e-mail MP3 attachments promising music from Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Britney Spears. Instead of receiving a song, spam recipients are hearing audio stock pitches.

MessageLabs has been tracking what it dubs "audio stock spam" since 11pm Wednesday and report nearly 10,000 of these messages are being sent each hour through botnets. Security analyst Paul Wood says these attacks are being sent from the same spam gang responsible for large scale PDF spam recently seen. The file name of the audio file varies, but some of the MP3 attachments are named elvis.mp3, britney.mp3, and beatles.mp3.

The audio spam stock pitches are for a Canadian company Exit Only which runs the Web site Text4Cars.com. The audio message in all instances are the same and appear to be spoken by a woman with a British accent. The audio quality varies and in this sample (MP3) provided by MessageLabs the audio is nearly inaudible.

"Unlike with traditional spam, people are more trusting and willing to open PDF and MP3 attachments," Wood says. Many people, he says, never imagine spam being delivered in that way. Wood says the MP3 attachments associated with this attack he has analyzed do not carry a malicious virus payload.

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