Spam is the new propaganda tool
"Spam" e-mail, used for years to sell snake-oil medicine, penny stocks and suspiciously low mortgages, is now being used to sell neo-Nazi ideology as well.
A new computer worm sent right-wing German messages to millions of computers over the weekend in what anti-virus experts said was a sign that spam has become a tool for propagandists as well as scam artists.
"We have seen a trend in which worm authors are using spam not to hawk goods, but as a tool for political propaganda," said Scott Chasin, chief technical officer for the anti-virus firm MX Logic.
Chasin and other experts said the messages were sent by computers that had been infected with a new variant of the Sober worm, which turns computers into "zombies" that can be used as a base for attacks.
Experts described the amount of spam generated as "staggering."
"We've gotten inundated with reports of small networks getting hammered," said Scott Fendley, an incident handler for the Internet Storm Center, a warning service that tracks online threats.
