Spam Campaign Abusing Yahoo's Services

Think spammers.Yahoo.com trusts Yahoo.com, consequently, a spam campaign that using bogus Yahoo.com email accounts, and spamming only Yahoo users with links to Yahoo's search engine using queries leading to the exact spammer's URLs, is almost 100% sure to make it through spam filters. That seems to be case with this spam campaign perfectly fitting into the "spam that made it through" category.

Sample search queries resulting in a single result with the spammer's URL :
- yahoo.com/////////////////////////////search/search;_ylt=?p=())))))))))))))callfold(((((((((((((((()))))))))))((((()))))))5000)))))))))))(((((((
- search.yahoo.com/search?p=(((((())))))))((((((((((((((housetear((((())))))(((((((())))))))(((((((((5000((((((())))))))))))))))))))
- yahoo.com/search/search;_ylt=?p=]]]]]]]]]]]][[[[[[galestay[[]]]]]]][[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[$229[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[]]]]
- yahoo.com/search/search;_ylt=?p=(((((())))))))))galestay((((((()((((((((((((((((($229)))))))))))(((()
- yahoo.com/////////////////////////////search/search;_ylt=?p=))))))))))))))(((((richorbit((((((((((((((())))))))))))((((((())))))$229)))))))))))(((((((
- yahoo.com/////////////////////////////search/search;_ylt=?p=))))))(((())))))))))richorbit((((((((((((())))))))((((((((((((((((((((((((((((($229))))))((((())


The search queries lead to galestay.com; housetear.com; callfold.com; richorbit.com with several hundred spam domains participating in the campaign parked at 218.61.7.21 and 220.248.185.64.

With CAPTCHA solving and automatic account registration getting easier to outsource next to the easily obtainable segmented email databases of a particular ISP or web based email service provider, launching such a campaign requires less efforts than it used to before. Interestingly, the spammed through Yahoo emails never leave Yahoo Mail since it's only spamming Yahoo users according to the extensive number of emails CC-ed.

What's to come in the long-term? With an entire spamming infrastructure build on the foundation of the hundreds of thousands of bogus accounts at legitimate services, spammers are already starting to embrace the "legitimate sender" mentality and are working on ways to integrate that infrastructure in their spam systems, evidence of which can be seen in several different managed spamming services.

Related posts:
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Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail’s CAPTCHA broken by spammers
Spam coming from free email providers increasing
Inside India’s CAPTCHA solving economy