Spam Volume Rose to 150 Billion Messages a Day in Q2 2008

According to quarterly Internet Threat Report by Secure Computing for Q2 2008, the total number of spam e-mails has come down in recent months but still around 150 Billion messages are being sent every day, up 280% compared to the same period last year.

The report also revealed that male enhancement product advertisements constitute nearly four out of every 10 spam mails. Next come knock-offs and inexpensive prescription drugs. spammers are also resorting to new languages to capture the attention of wider audience. Earlier, almost all the spam messages were created in English, but now spammer have started using other languages also in which German and Japanese are the most popular ones.

The report also disclosed that the online threat landscape has undergone a tremendous change as cyber criminals are switching to more sophisticated and new blended attacks to bypass software defense and educated users.

The US is a leading contributor to the total number of spam messages, sending spam almost double than that sent by Russia, the second largest contributor. The top spam producing countries - the US, Italy, Russia and China- account for 55% of the global spam volume. The report also said that the spam traffic from emerging countries would also increase with expansion of Internet infrastructure.

Moreover, the ZBot spyware group grew rapidly in the second quarter of 2008. It steals sensitive data of users and also set up a backdoor on compromised systems to give complete control of the system to attackers. Later on, attackers launch spam relaying and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks through these infected systems. Another important ad spyware group was Swizzor that has expanded significantly in recent months.

In addition, the report said that porn sites with malevolent activity also surged 45% in Q2 2008 against Q1 2008 on a daily basis owing to several reasons. Even more interesting aspect of online threat landscape in Q2 2008 was the rise in malicious Websites that were famous for malicious activities, including spam URLs.

According to Secure Computing, the attack vectors are continuously changing but the ultimate target of making financial gain has not changed.

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» SPAMfighter News - 9/2/2008