A new report from security firm Imperva, lays bare how comment spam is constructed and executed. In contrast to a regular comment, the purpose of comment spam is to embed a link or an unsolicited advertisement.
One of the primary purposes of comment spam isn’t to directly exploit a user, but rather to help improve search engine optimization (SEO) for the spammer. By having more backlinks from Websites, the theory is that a given site will be able to improve its SEO positioning.
Imperva found that 80 percent of all comment spam traffic is generated by only 28 percent of the attackers.
“Seeing that a minority of attackers actually generate the majority of the comment spam demonstrated that we could profile the behavior of a comment spammer and then take action,” Barry Shteiman, director of security strategy at Imperva, told eWEEK.
Read the full story at eWEEK:
‘Comment Spam’ on Websites Could Lead to Security Breach
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.