This New Email Attack Can Bypass Spam Filters: Here's How to Protect Against It
1 min read
Summary
Email users are being warned about a new scam technique called ‘email salting’, which allows phishing scammers to bypass email spam filters.
This is achieved by manipulating the HTML code in an email so that, while any scam triggers are clearly visible in the body of the email, the underlying code is filled with irrelevant characters, confusing the filter.
One example given is altering the spelling of the word Wells Fargo in the code so that it reads WEqcvuilLLS FAroyawdRGO, but the untouched phrase appears as intended to the reader.
Scammers can also employ homoglyph attacks, where they replace similar-looking, but encoded differently characters, to trick readers.
Bank of America could, for example, be ‘salted’ to read Bank оf America, with the second ‘o’ being replaced by its Cyrillic counterpart.
Users are urged to check the HTML code behind any suspicious emails via their email client’s Source View option to check for tampering.
While these tricks can be tricky to spot, users are advised to pay attention to details, and use dedicated online tools to assess irregular characters in emails received.
