Blogs under attack

Hackers are targeting blogs by exploiting the trackback feature to launch spam attacks. According to SC Magazine, the Filipino online news agency Newsbreak was hit with over 27,000 pornographic links to its web site. The agency has suspended the trackback feature.

Trackback technology allows blog owner to monitor who has been viewing and inserting links to their postings. Spammers can automatically connect via this feature to postings on legitimate blogs, trying to redirect visitors to the illegal sites. This technique can also be used to start a DDos attack and overwhelm the server that is hosting the blogs.

To go even further, Blogger.com, the blog publishing system from Google.com, has been infiltrated by a number of phishers. The Stration mass mailer is being used to drive traffic to malicious web sites. Also, a number of Blogger sites have been compromised with malicious code. In some cases trojans reside on the website trying to infect the computer of the visitor.