Forest Global Training Partners

Cyber Risks · Cisco Talos

Little Links, Big Headaches

Summary: Cisco Talos tracked a spam botnet, identified by the Composite Block List as 'unknown2250', that drove an explosion in link-shortener use in spam beginning in March, pushing weight loss products, erectile dysfunction medication, and dating or casual sex sites. The group also compromises third-party web hosting accounts to create random-letter subdirectories holding HTML redirect pages, and one registration email, daliandm@sina.com, is tied to more than 60 other domain registrations.

Why it matters: A single email address tied to over 60 malicious domain registrations, still in use for new ones within the past week, shows the campaign earns enough to keep reusing infrastructure without concern. The redirect pages sit in neglected subdirectories on small, poorly maintained websites, so the hosting account you rarely log into may already be serving someone else's traffic.

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Topics
Malware
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