New type of e-mail spam difficult to screen out, infiltrates WiscMail system

A new and innovative type of spam plaguing the WiscMail system has been evading UW-Madison's Division of Information Technology, according to a post on the DoIT website. 

 

 

 

The offending mail formats its message in an image, rather than in text format. The image is attached to the e-mail and according to DoIT, the WiscMail system displays attached images as a part of a message. This makes it hard for viewers to determine if they are looking at an image and not text. Because it is difficult for computers that screen mail to detect spam content in an image, these messages are very hard to catch.