Vulnerable WordPress Blog Spam Attacks

According to a report that disclosed in the Intelligence Report, September 2011, Symantec found that about 72 percent of all malware that bersal of emails throughout the month of September and is a malware polymorphic type (easy to change shape) generic aggressive.

Since the discovery of the first, last July the figure had risen by 23.7 percent. In August the numbers slightly dropped to 18.5 percent, until finally jumped to 72 percent in the last month.


"It seems clear that cyber criminals have stepped up their attacks by fully exploiting the weaknesses of traditional security," said Paul Wood, Symantec Senioer Intelligence Analyst, October 13, 2011.

From further analysis, it is known that the social engineering behind this attack is also improved. "The perpetrator uses new techniques such as undercover into an email from a printer or scanner smart forwarded by colleagues within the same company," said Wood.

In terms of spam emails, although the rate of spread of spam is quite stable during the month of September, Symantec found the utilization of the identified vulnerabilities in certain versions of WordPress blogging software on a large number of web sites on the Internet.

"Email spam containing links to websites which are also sent hijacked by spammers," said Wood. "However, it should be noted is, users who have blogs hosted on WordPress itself looks are not affected," he said.

Wood said the exploitation of security gaps to serve the interests of the spammer is a stern warning on the need for software up-to-date and do a patch to the software and use the latest release.