A foreign language post could be someone who registered and then posted in their own language but it is pretty unlikely.les wrote:Now and then we get some idiots posting some weird stuff here in a foreign language, whats that all about? I don't understand all this spam etc business, why do these things happen and what are they trying to achieve. Yes, I daresay its obvious to most but not to me.
What is more likely is that some wannabe hackers (known as script kiddies in the trade) have decided to try and automate the forum registration process using the their favourite scripting language. Once they have it working they could share their script with others who then might use it to post a message encouraging people to go to their site. To get this to work all you need is access to the inbox of the email address you specified on registration.
"encouraging people to go to their site" has changed a little over the years. Originally SPAM was almost exclusively designed to sell you stuff. ED drugs probably the highest percentage. You see very little of this anymore as people just didn't respond in big enough numbers to make it worthwhile. The new breed of SPAM is much more dangerous as it is either a direct phishing attack designed to elicit your banking (for instance) credentials from you or a link to a website that will install malware onto your computer.
Once malware is on your computer then, depending on the malware, the controller of the malware can tell your computer to do practically anything. An example being the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on VISA by the hacking group anonymous.
Groups of "controlled" PCs are typically referred to as botnets and a botnet and its capability has value to some so ultimately the reason for SPAM is money. It used to be sales of goods now it's sales of zombie PCs processing power.
