Both Sen. Barack Obama and Gov. Sarah Palin are clear winners when it comes to spam messages
A study conducted by Secure Computing revealed that the amount of spam that mentioned Obama beat out his rival, Sen. John McCain, by a ratio of 6 to 1. This is not a reflection of who is ahead in the polls but shows what many recent spam messages consist of, mostly Obama related subjects with Palin related messages coming in a good second place.
There is not a specific identifiable spam message such as the one we reported about a new wave of malspam with "Obama is Gay" and "McCain names VP" titled messages that ties into Obama or Palin related spam. It seems to be multiple variations of spam including Obama and Palin that are plaguing many computer users. Although all of the spam messages are fake, they remain to be very effective in spreading malware because it is based on popular subjects. Lets face it, popular subjects get the most views and when you get an email message that may be using a popular subject such as Palin or Obama, you are more apt to click on it and open it.
Unfortunately hackers and spammers have abused this tactic of using the current presidential election to spoof computer users through many of their messages sent to millions of computer users. Last month Sophos, a security vendor, alerted people of a malicious email circulating that had a link to a sex video of Obama which proved to be a link to spyware. That's just one example of a fake idea but popular subject used as a spam email. Everything gets twisted when it comes to promoting rogue applications or spyware such as in the case of many recent malspam messages. Several months ago we witnessed an increase in misleading messages before the well-known CNN.com malspam messages where sent out which goes to support the fact that popular titled spam messages are increasing.
What can we do to protect ourselves from these spam messages?
Our findings of recent spam messages related to the presidential election will continue to be a hot topic in the security world. We can only strongly urge computer users to be cautious of any email message that they receive using a popular subject such as Palin, Obama, McCain and Biden. Spammers are going out of their way to change the game on tricking computer users out of money and infect as many computers with malicious files and programs. It would be a good idea to keep your antispyware and antivirus software up to date to assist you in catching these types of infections. Be cautions and mindful of all email messages that you receive that may be related to the current election. When in question about a specific message it may be best to delete it rather than risk damage to your system by downloading a file or clicking on a malicious link.
How many election related email messages have you received in the past few months? Were any of them found to be spam messages using Palin or Obama in the subject line?