Government Addresses Used To Spoof Spam

April 19th, 2006: A spate of spam emails, purporting to have come from state and federal government departments, including Parliament House, hit today - the day after the ACMA claimed its first win under Federal Anti-Spam laws.

By Tim Smith

In what can only be seen as an ironic twist of events, spam which purports to take users to a high-end job search service has been hitting in-boxes globally apparently from government bodies as diverse as:
Nick Dondas (Member of the Northern Territory)
Central Darling Shire Council
The Victorian Government's Education Webmail Portal
LawLink New South Wales

The Spam points users towards a domain, JobAlertsvc.com, that proves to have errant domain name services (DNS) records leaving a false trail. This means that back-tracing the service will prove difficult in the event that any of the government departments wish to follow up the illegal use of their address details.

Email 'spoofing' - where a nefarious organisation uses an innocent party (or parties') email address details as the 'reply-to' field in its Spam is a tried and tested method for sending either broadcast advertising or to spread web-based viral infections.

It is obvious to IDM that no government department or member can be held responsible for these emails. However, as we go to press with this story we still await comment as to any action that will be taken by the ACMA or The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

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