Ah so Mr Alan Ralsky one of the biggest spammers of all-time is back in the news after his indictment with 10 others for running a large scale spam operation intended to inflate stocks artificially.

At one time it was thought Mr Ralsky and his friends were responsible for the majority of the spam sent, he’s certainly one of the most prolific and there are around 150 spammers in the World responsible for about 90% of the spam received.

Infamous spam king Alan M. Ralsky is on the run following the Jan. 3 indictment of Ralsky and 10 others for operating a sophisticated spam scam involving pump-and-dump Chinese stocks.

The 41-count indictment, unsealed in a Detroit federal court, claims Ralsky, 52, and his fellow defendants operated a wide-ranging international fraud scheme involving millions of illegal e-mails touting thinly-traded Chinese penny stocks. Ralsky profited by selling the stock at artificially inflated prices.

Only two of the defendants appeared in court Jan. 3 for arraignment. Ralsky is reportedly at large in Europe.

It looks like he wants to skip on this one. It is a pretty serious case though – international stock fraud.

According to the indictment, Ralsky and his group earned approximately $3 million on the scheme during the summer of 2005. Ralsky faces charges including conspiracy, fraud in connection with electronic mail, computer fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

The illegal e-mail practices cited in the indictment include evading spam-blocking devices, falsifying headers and domain names, using proxy computers to distribute the spam and misrepresenting the advertising content in the actual e-mail.

Ralsky seems to have made a good living from spamming when back in his palatial, 8,000-square-foot mansion in suburban Detroit was raided. He was living well.

He has admitted that spam had made him a millionaire.

Source: eWeek

If you remember a while back we mentioned PDF & Image Attachment Spam – The New Problem with E-mail, now we have another ‘innovation’ in spamming..

MP3 spam!

It seems they are using it for the same old pump and dump tactics (Microcap stock fraud) to artificially inflate stock prices then sell out fast.

Spammers are back with a new trick, this time round sending messages with MP3 attachments that contain the latest pump-and-dump stock scams.

One sample identified this morning by GFI, was a heavily distorted 30-second MP3 file. A synthetic female voice was used to promote a particular stock. This voice is distorted to avoid filtering approaches based on the file signature.

Once again, spammers are taking advantage of the fact that the MP3 format is one of the most common in use today, another attempt at social engineering.

I wonder what they are going to come out with next, really?

The spam is a short, 30-second MP3 file recorded at low bit-rate with a synthetic female voice promoting a particular stock; the voice heavily distorted to avoid signature-based anti-spam approaches (click here [MP3] to listen to an edited sample of MP3 spam).

“MP3 spam is a natural progression from PDF and Excel spam whereby spammers are exploiting a new file format to be able to send spam. This is their latest attempt to evade anti-spam filters. There is also a social engineering aspect to this tactic because people frequently share MP3 files,” David Vella, Director of Product Management, said.

Another thing to look out for anyway, perhaps start filtering mp3 attachments on the mail gateway, then they’ll start putting them in passworded zip files I guess..

Source: GFI