Spammers Tempt Surfers to Help Solve Captchas

Call it an online game of strip poker, only spammers are the ones walking away with all the winnings. The latest innovation in malicious software takes the form of shapely “Melissa,” an alluring, scantily clad blond who requests the victim’s assistance in disrobing her. In this particular scam, which is assisted by a piece of malware anti-virus firm TrendMicro identifies as TROJ_CAPTCHAR.A, an additional article of clothing comes off each time the user helps her solve a CAPTCHA. CAPTCHAs, or “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart,” are those squiggly agglomerations of letters and numbers that free Webmail providers such as Yahoo! require the user to interpret and input before being allowed to open a new e-mail account. The Webmail providers use the CAPTCHAs to stop spammers and other bad guys from using automated processes to create hundreds or thousands of fake accounts. Those new [...]

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