mal-spam
Mal-spam (or perhaps malspam) describes all forms of malicious spam sent with malicious intent. Mal-spam includes: phishing, spear-phishing, whaling, baiting, pretexting, among others.
- Payloads can include: Malicious attachments, links to malicious web pages, enticements to perform transactions, ransomware, key loggers, etc.
- Bad things that can happen: man-in-the-middle attacks (woman-in-the-middle attacks too), network compromise, zombie botnets, insertion of zero-day exploits, viruses, trojan horses, rootkits, backdoors, job scams and other scams and code with malicious intent.
- Mal-spam can be hard to spot due to: Sender address spoofing, content that replicates legitimate senders, etc.
- Payloads can include: Malicious attachments, links to malicious web pages, enticements to perform transactions, ransomware, key loggers, etc.
- Bad things that can happen: man-in-the-middle attacks (woman-in-the-middle attacks too), network compromise, zombie botnets, insertion of zero-day exploits, viruses, trojan horses, rootkits, backdoors, job scams and other scams and code with malicious intent.
- Mal-spam can be hard to spot due to: Sender address spoofing, content that replicates legitimate senders, etc.
Be especially careful to avoid mal-spam, it can really mess up your day. Better off to just delete it. Certainly don't click any links or open attachments.