Microsoft Live Hotmail Under Attack by Streamlined Anti-CAPTCHA and Mass-mailing Operations

Websense Security Labs ThreatSeeker technology has discovered that spammers in their recent tactics have drawn their attention towards traditional and infamous Hotmail, aka Live Hotmail services after the streamlined Live Mail Anti-CAPTCHA operations. Spammers have managed to create automated bots that are capable of not only signing up and creating random Hotmail accounts, but also use these accounts for spamming purposes from a proper Live Hotmail service. Websense predictions about this sophisticated spammer strategy at the time of Live Mail Anti-CAPTCHA and Gmail Anti-CAPTCHA operations, and its outcomes have been factual with this attack.

Windows Live Hotmail (previously MSN Hotmail and Hotmail) is a free webmail service of the Windows Live brand provided by Microsoft. It originates from Hotmail. It was one of the first free webmail services. The current version was officially announced on November 1, 2005 as an update to Microsoft's existing MSN Hotmail service. It features 5 GB of storage, and integration with Windows Live Messenger, Spaces, Calendar and Contacts. It has over 250 million users worldwide and is available in 35 different languages.