Spam has become a ubiquitous part of our lives, pervading our inboxes, PDA's and mobile phones. In a quest to con users and circumvent increasingly sophisticated spam filtering technology, spam has emerged in audio form.

Last year spammers moved away from the very popular image spam in favor of attachment spam - spam containing attachments such as PDF, Excel, Text and ZIP files which, in turn, harbor harmless as well as offensive, misleading and malicious content. However, as spam filters became more effective at identifying attachment spam, the spammers added a new tactic to their spam arsenal. Enter MP3 spam.

Spammers recently launched an MP3 spam campaign in which their messages are delivered in audio form. The files are given innocuous-sounding names, like coolringtone.mp3, but feature a voice recording touting the virtues of purchasing a particular corporate stock. It is pump and dump spam in audio!

This new form of spam is difficult for most email filters to detect because each audio file is slightly different. This is another form of spam riding the coattails of social engineering because people frequently share MP3 files without being suspicious of the content or consequences of opening the file.

The size of the messages containing MP3 spam attachments is what is causing network administrators the biggest headaches. The MP3 spam files recently used run from 85KB to 147KB. Identifying and blocking spam at the gateway is a critical component in managing network bandwidth, securing the infrastructure against unnecessary and malicious spam and protecting unsuspecting employees.

How can you maximize network bandwidth and uptime, and minimize your organization's data storage costs while ensuring your company network is protected against the latest forms of attachment spam?

Ensure your email content filtering solution can review file types not just file names. MailMarshal SMTP 6.4 features Marshal's strongest Defense-in-Depth Anti-Spam Engine ever. It filters more file types and attachments than any other email content filtering solution available. It blocks spam at the gateway before it enters your network with its multi-faceted spam and phishing detection engine, ensuring the best technique is used to catch the right type of spam.

You can be assured that once countermeasures against MP3 spam are widely in place, spammers will move on to another payload. To ensure you are aware of the latest threats as they emerge, visit the Marshal TRACE site daily.