Spam spreads faster if propagated via hacked email accounts: Research

A new research has found that spam spreads much faster and to more people when it is being propagated by hacked, or otherwise compromised, email accounts rather than legitimate accounts.

According to a research published in the International Journal of Security and Networks, spam sent from hacked accounts is often given more credence than anonymous spam or spam with an obviously scurrilous or scandalous source.

In some cases, the recipients believe the spam content is correct and forward it to their friends who may, in turn, forward it to their friends. Large numbers of accounts are hacked through malicious software or by guessing passwords with the purpose of using them as hosts for sending out vast numbers of spam messages. However, modeling the spread of this kind of information usually assumes that the source is a human deliberately sharing the information.

Hacked accounts tend to more aggressively send spam, partly because deliberately, individually propagated spam is done manually, whereas hacked spam is more commonly generated automatically by the malware that has infected the account in the first place. This aggressive behavior of hacked accounts causes spam to reach more people faster. The online equivalent of word-of-mouth is powerful when a message is repeatedly and forcibly sent to one's inbox, the research said.