The emergence of convergence

Spammers are often regarded as a pretty unsophisticated bunch when it comes to technical skills. Adept at sending hundreds of thousands of unsolicited commercial emails they may be, but they are rarely renowned for using sophisticated techniques in order to facilitate the spread of spam. Virus writers, on the other hand, are generally thought of as a technically superior group. Although some of them have only basic IT skills and may even use 'kits' to write viruses, others are experienced programmers capable of producing increasingly complex malicious code.

But the line between spammers and virus writers is becoming blurred as each makes use of tactics typically associated with the other.

As a result we are seeing spam incorporating methods for harvesting emails and bypassing detection and viruses manipulating open relay servers and open proxies in order to spread further.

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