Smut spam and links leading to Malware are starting to crop up on Google Groups. While Google Groups has always had its share of spam and trolls, Sunbelt Software recently archived a list of over two hundred porn related links, some of them malicious.
Smut spam and links leading to Malware are starting to crop up on Google Groups. While Google Groups has always had its share of spam and trolls, Sunbelt Software recently archived a list of over two hundred porn related links, some of them malicious. (Img: Google/J.Anderson)
“These pages push other porn pages for profit. While not all of the redirects go to Malware sites, we did observe some redirects to a site, which ultimately pushes a fake codec Trojan, which if installed, results in a VirusHeat infection,” Alex Eckelberry said on the Sunbelt blog.
While it is possible they are not related, the Sunbelt heads up comes just after another security company reported that bots are being used to crack Google’s CAPTCHA system. CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. More often than not, CAPTCHA comes in the form of image lettering, which you have to type out to prove you are human.
“What we're seeing is the technology on the hacker side has surpassed the simple CAPTCHAs,” said Stephan Chenette, manager of WebSense Security Labs. “In the public domain there are several tools available right now for everyone to use to break simple CAPTCHAs.”
The success rate for the CAPTCHA attacks is thought to be around twenty percent. “It would be very odd if a human would fail one out of five times in understanding what that CAPTCHA was,” Chenette said. “From that we conclude it's possibly a bot network with automated tools involved.”
So is the Sunbelt finding related? It’s possible according to them, but there is no clear proof. As for the junk groups and spam, "We have removed the Google Groups and accounts in question for violating our Terms of Service," said a Google spokesperson to Information Week. "Google is committed to preventing spam and other forms of abuse on Google Groups. We encourage users to notify us of any issues."
Google Groups came about after Google bought Deja News in 2001. The reasoning was to archive Usenet, and to create a user friendly portal to access Usenet. The results have been mixed at best for the last seven years.
Sunbelt Software has a list of domains listed in Google Groups on their blog. (http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ihs/alex/groupslist.pdf)
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