{"id":13278,"date":"2017-09-30T14:32:22","date_gmt":"2017-09-30T14:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/?p=13278"},"modified":"2020-02-01T11:39:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T11:39:52","slug":"giant-spambot-scooped-711-million-email-addresses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digital-sentinel.com\/breach\/giant-spambot-scooped-711-million-email-addresses\/","title":{"rendered":"Giant spambot scooped up 711 million email addresses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">A malware researcher has discovered a spamming operation that has been drawing on a list of 711.5 million email addresses.<\/p>\n<p>The scale of the scheme appears to make it the biggest find of its kind.<\/p>\n<p>The addresses &#8211; and in some cases associated passwords &#8211; have apparently been gathered to help spread banking malware.<\/p>\n<p>Members of the public can check if their accounts have been affected via\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"https:\/\/haveibeenpwned.com\/\">the Have I Been Pwned service<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Its operator, Troy Hunt, acknowledged that some of the listed addresses corresponded to non-existent accounts.<\/p>\n<p>But he\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.troyhunt.com\/inside-the-massive-711-million-record-onliner-spambot-dump\/\">added that the number<\/a>\u00a0that had been collated still totalled a &#8220;mind-boggling amount&#8221;.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Hidden images<\/h2>\n<p>The Spambot discovery was\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"https:\/\/benkowlab.blogspot.co.uk\/2017\/08\/from-onliner-spambot-to-millions-of.html\">first flagged by a Paris-based<\/a>\u00a0security expert who calls himself Benkow.<\/p>\n<p>It was then brought to wider attention by the\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/onliner-spambot-largest-ever-malware-campaign-millions\/\">ZDnet news site<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The database of 711 million user details can be divided in two.<\/p>\n<p>In cases where the attackers know only an email address, they can only target the owner with spam in the hope of tricking them into revealing more information.<\/p>\n<p>But in cases where they also have the user&#8217;s login password and other details, they can secretly hijack their accounts to aid their campaign via a spambot known as Onliner.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/av\/uk-40505539\/why-do-we-call-unwanted-emails-spam\">Why do we call unwanted emails spam?<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-39843895\">Guardian Soulmates users hit with spam<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-england-hampshire-39938379\">Onecom fined for millions of spam texts<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Benkow acknowledged that it was &#8220;difficult to know where [the] credentials had come from&#8221;, but suggested that they might have been gathered from previous leaks, a Facebook phishing campaign and illegal sales of hacking victims&#8217; details.<\/p>\n<p>In some cases, the perpetrators had gathered details of the accounts&#8217; simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) server and port settings.<\/p>\n<p>This information could be used to fool email providers&#8217; spam-detecting systems into letting messages through that might otherwise have been blocked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While the list of mailable addresses is quite large, it is probably no larger than any seen previously,&#8221; Richard Cox, former chief information officer of the Spamhaus project, told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The lists of compromised accounts are more worrying.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When compromised accounts are used for spam, they can only be stopped by their providers suspending the account &#8211; but when that many are involved, it will severely overload the security\/abuse departments of those providers, making it a slow process and that is what keeps the spam flowing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Benkow added that the Onliner spambot had been hiding tiny pixel-sized images in the emails it had sent out, which were used to harvest information about recipients&#8217; computers.<\/p>\n<p>This meant that the right kinds of malware attachments required to infect different types of devices could be included when follow-up messages masquerading as business invoices were delivered.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Hunt said that the Spambot lists had been tracked to a Netherlands-based computer server, but it had yet to be shut down.<\/p>\n<p>For now, affected users are able to check only if their email addresses have been targeted, but not if their accounts have been hijacked.<\/p>\n<p>But Benkow told the BBC there were still protective steps affected users could take.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I recommend you to change your password, and be more vigilant with the emails that you receive, now you know that you&#8217;re on malware deliverers&#8217; lists,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A malware researcher has discovered a spamming operation that has been drawing on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":13279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,46],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v18.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Giant spambot scooped up 711 million email addresses - Digital Sentinel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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