[Cialug] Subtle spam attacks

[Nathan Smith]

We have seen some recent spam attacks that have us concerned.  The sender names in the email messages are variations of the names of real people (clients) we would correspond with.  The address might contain a first name from one person and a random or synthetic name for the last name.  And different variations of this.

The disconcerting part is how a spammer might gather this kind of information in order to formulate attacks.  It is almost like they have access to our body of email or some portion of it in order to gather these names to use.

Is there a name for this?  Is anyone else seeing anything like this?

Thanks.

-Nate