Spammers take advantage of the reputations of global brands such as UPS, DHL and Facebook to prompt opening of emails, according to a new report by Commtouch.
The study found that, during the fourth quarter, cybercriminals have focused on distributing the Mal-Bredo A virus during this past quarter, while the number of variants decreased from 10,000 to 1,000 as compared to last quarter, the spread was with much more virulence.
According to Commtouch, an average of 312,000 zombies were newly activated daily for the purpose of malicious activity and spam levels averaged 77% of all email traffic throughout the quarter with November reporting the most spam levels in the quarter with 98%, while December bottoming out at 68%.
Sites in categories such as computers and technology, and search engines and portals, topped the list of web categories manipulated by phishing schemes. Business continued to be the web site category most infected with malware for the third quarter in a row, according to the study.
Brazil continued to produce most zombies, responsible for 20.4% of global zombie activity. Pharmacy spam remained in the top spot with 81% of all spam messages, last quarter it led with 68%. Replicas remained in the top two spot, falling from 19% to 5.4%.
Asaf Greiner, vice president of products at Commtouch, said: “As we review the internet threats for this quarter, we can really see the creativity the cybercriminals use to ensure their messages are opened. Whether we like it or not, their activities really demonstrate when society-wide activities – such as social media participation – reach critical mass. Essentially, if a spammer is using a specific brand to entice consumers to open their mail, it means that brand has achieved a strong, positive reputation.”
Commtouch’s quarterly trend report is based on the analysis of over two billion email messages and internet transactions seen daily in the company’s cloud-based global detection centres.
