According to the Marshal TRACE Team, the latest Storm spam campaign has been timed to coincide with the start of the NFL season. The message lures recipients to a fake NFL Web site with the enticement of a 'Free NFL Game Tracker' -- a utility that supposedly updates fans on game results but is actually the Storm Trojan horse. Users are lured to download the tracker and by doing so download the Trojan horse.
"This new campaign featuring the NFL tracker is not just designed to target ardent NFL fans but also to exploit the emerging popularity of Web-based football fantasy leagues," said Bradley Anstis, director of Product Management at Marshal. "The Storm Gang are experts at manipulating the latest trends in Internet usage to lure unsuspecting Internet users into their traps, so their move to target the NFL and fantasy leagues is not unexpected."
According to Marshal's TRACE Center, the NFL Storm campaign accounts for one to two percent of all spam. The Storm Gang is responsible for up to 20 percent of all spam traffic worldwide -- roughly equivalent to all the spam generated in the United States on any given day. The scale of the botnet at the command of the Storm Gang is estimated to consist of anywhere between one to five million computers according to differing industry estimates.
"Of greatest concern is the frequency with which the Storm Gang is changing its campaigns -- currently they are changing them on a daily basis," said Anstis.
The Storm Gang launched three consecutive campaigns in three days leading into the weekend. Late last week, the Storm botnet was used to distribute a mass campaign targeting 'Tor' -- a free downloadable that allows users to communicate anonymously over the Internet. The next day the spammers reverted back to the YouTube campaign, which first appeared two weeks ago. Then yesterday the NFL campaign was launched.
