Some of the key tools that enable efficient,

[Tom Cruise]

Key Tools Used by Spammers​

Spammers utilize a wide array of tools to harvest email addresses, mask their identity, distribute spam at scale and automate the process. Let’s explore some of the key tools that enable efficient, large-scale spam campaigns.
The more email addresses a spammer has, the more recipients they can spam. To build massive lists, spammers use various email harvesting tools and services:

• Web scraping software – Browser automation tools like PhantomJS, Puppeteer, and Scrapy can programmatically crawl sites to extract emails.
• Email extractors – Dedicated tools like Email Extractor, Voila Norbert, and Hunter can harvest emails from sites.
• List buying services – Underground vendors sell millions of hacked and harvested emails.
• Phishing kits – Premade phishing site templates help collect entered emails.
• Brute forcing tools – Programs guess email formats like first.last@domain.
• Email appending services – Match names and profiles to generate email addresses.
• Referral scrapers – Grab emails from HTTP referer headers of visitors.

So whether it’s automated scraping, buying stolen data or tricking users, spammers have numerous options to amass target email lists.
Since spammers prefer to remain anonymous, they use various tools to mask their identities and avoid detection:

• Proxy servers – Routing spam through third-party proxy servers hides the original IP address.
• VPN services – Virtual Private Networks allow sending spam through different geographical exit nodes.
• Tor browser – The Onion Router obscures IP address by encrypting traffic and using relays.
• Email header spoofers – Modify email headers to impersonate other sender addresses and domains.
• Disposable emails – Use temporary email addresses from AnonBox, Guerrilla Mail, etc to register for services and send spam.
• Sender identity tools – Services like Mailitude can generate fake sender personas with professional-looking LinkedIn profiles.

With these spoofing and anonymizing tools, spammers can mask their tracks and operate with impunity.
Botnets are networks of infected, zombie computers that spammers can remotely control to do their bidding. Let’s look at how they are built and used:

• Hackers find security flaws to break into computer systems.
• Malware payloads are installed to infect the computer and establish remote access.
• Systems are configured to quietly obey commands as botnet nodes.
• Each bot is a zombie slave that can be remotely controlled without the owner’s knowledge.
• Social engineering like phishing tricks users into downloading malware.
• Exploit kits and drive-by downloads silently install malware from malicious sites.
• Brute forcing attacks guess weak passwords to break into systems.
• Unpatched software vulnerabilities provide openings for injections.

By stealthily infecting thousands of computers, spammers can build a powerful botnet spam army.
To unleash spam at scale, spammers use dedicated email blasting and spamming tools that automate sending:

• Email bombing/spamming tools – Programs like SNeaker, SMAIL, Avalanche, etc that allow blasting email lists with personalized or randomized message content.
• Phishing frameworks – Kits like Blackeye, SocialFish, ShellPhish help spam personalized phishing sites to collect credentials.
• Email testing and verification – Identify dead email addresses before spamming to maximize deliverability.
• Spam bots – Automated bots continuously scrape sites for emails, register accounts and send spam.
• Email throttling – Limit sending rate to avoid crossing provider sending limits.
• Open and click tracking – Track user engagement with spam to refine messages.
• Spam metrics – Tools provide stats on delivery rates, opens, clicks, and more to optimize campaigns.

With the right blasting tools, spammers can bombard inboxes with their garbage at massive scale.

So in summary, spammers have access to a robust toolkit of harvesting, anonymizing, botnet and spamming tools to perpetrate their crimes at scale. While daunting, understanding these key weapons in the spammer arsenal is important for bolstering defenses.

 

[Ultraman]

thanks alot tom bro your work is great