Many bloggers such as this one got TONS of emails linked to articles in German. And it was part of a new kind of spam — political spam:
Some e-mail inboxes filled up with German-language spam over the weekend, as the well-traveled Sober virus was apparently turned into a propaganda machine by its author.
Sober has infected millions of computers around the globe since it first launched in 2003, and it’s gone through nearly 20 variations. But this weekend’s version was different — it wasn’t designed to spread itself, or to infect other computers with toxic e-mail messages. It was designed to simply get a point across.
Actually, in the ones I got, I thought I detected the German word for “enlargement.” But I digress:
Some time during the weekend, thousands of Sober-infected machines under the control of the virus writer were instructed to download a new version of the program, called Sober-Q, according to antivirus firm MessageLabs.
The new version turned infected computers into spam machines. The infected computers were then told to send out hundreds of messages, mostly in German, linking to Web pages containing information on conservative German political issues. Many of the e-mails actually linked to legitimate news stories, at Web sites like Der Spiegel Online. But the worm isn’t spreading, and only previously infected computers were at risk of infection, experts said.
“It is a one-time political message,” said McAfee’s Vincent Gullotto, vice president of the firm’s virus research lab.
There are 72 variations of the spam. Some are in English, with crass messages, containing subject lines such as “The Whore Lived Like a German.” But others are obviously laced with politics. Some of the messages bemoan the bombing of Dresden by Allied armies in 1945. The e-mail may be timed to the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, celebrated last week.
Other messages contain arguments against allowing Turkey into the European Union. One message in English links to a story about the politically sensitive topic of alleged Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, “Armenian Genocide Plagues Ankara 90 Years On.” A public apology has been proposed as a condition of Turkey’s EU membership.
We got all of them. It’s also strange to monitor this because we did get back a message or two about delivery refused. Yet, we have “failsafe” addresses in our regular and gmail address books to ensure that we find out if something is going on. Plus virus and other checks show everything is fine. But we have indeed been flooded (and it is still going on) with spams in German.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.