What the PDF does that spam mean?
Q: I’ve been getting a lot of mail with PDF attachments. What are these things and how do I stop them? A: A few months ago, I wrote an article concerning the latest scourge to hit our e-mail in boxes called “image spam.” Image spam was introduced about two years ago and rapidly became the scourge of in boxes everywhere. Image spam is e-mail that contains an image of text rather than actual text. E-mail filters were having a difficult time with this type of spam because the text could not be analyzed for spamminess as easily as standard text e-mail. Anti-spam companies finally found ways to filter image spam, so it has fallen out of fashion and is beginning to be replaced with a new sort of spam involving PDF file attachments. Most of these attachments are generated by “zombie” computers infected with a virus called the Storm Worm. It is estimated that this virus is responsible for nearly 30 percent of all spam. The Storm Worm is spread by misrepresenting itself as a greeting card from
