Spammers have unleashed one of the biggest online stock manipulation campaigns in history in the last 24 hours, increasing global spam levels by 30 percent, a leading IT security company claimed on Wednesday.
Experts at SophosLabs have detected about 500 million emails containing advice to invest in Prime Time Stores Inc - an obscure US-based retail company - in a record-breaking example of the "pump-and-dump" spamming technique.
"Pump-and-dump" is when spammers buy shares, orchestrate a spam campaign promoting the company, then wait for a share price to rise before selling their stock for a profit.
"This particular campaign was first detected 24 hours ago in Germany and has caused a 30-percent rise in spam world-wide compared to typical levels," Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Britain-based Sophos, told AFP in a telephone interview.
"This is staggering. It's one of the biggest spam campaigns we've ever seen."
The email cites a company press release announcing the opening of stores by Prime Time Stores in Puerto Rico and goes on to say: "Imagine if you had the chance to buy a Wal-Mart franchise in Mexico right when it first opened its doors there and all you needed was a small stake to get in." It adds: "Hurry, we see this stock starting to make the turn NOW. Big watch in effect for August 8, 2007!".
Prime Time Stores was not immediately available for comment. Sophos said that "pump-and-dump" stock campaigns accounted for about 25 percent of all spam nowadays, up from 0.8 percent in January 2005. The group has "spam traps" designed to pick up and block spam.