India Stands Fourth in Producing Spam

As per the Symantec's phishing Report for November 2009, a new cohort of attackers is emerging in areas like South America, Japan and Asia Pacific, and has already begun surpassing their North American equivalents in terms of spam output and India has become the 4th leading spam generating country.

Report reveals that there was a major rise in all phishing attacks from September. The holiday season can be a golden opportunity for attackers to launch new attacks through e-mails, social networking websites and online forums, and individuals should be careful and alert about unfamiliar and suspicious links.

India donated considerably to the emergence of APJ. When the country ranking for originating spam for June 2009 is compared with October 2009, it can be noticed that countries like India, Chile, Taiwan and Thailand have surged at many places.

It is reported that the social networking websites are the frequent prey of attackers and Facebook is the most common target of the attackers. Domains .org, .com and .net were the major targets. The Symantec's report further states that banking websites have witnessed more attacks as compared to other sites and UK has been the most severely affected country.

Principal Analyst at Symantec, Amanda Grady, noted that the amplified danger to social networking websites is striking as it shows attackers are exploiting the repute and brand trust of authentic firms. Social networking websites that have a vast user base will continue to be the favorites of phishers and other malware creators and purveyors, as per the news published by indiaserver.com on November 11, 2009.

Meanwhile, as of October 2009, it appears as if the dominance of EMEA as the leading spam generating region has been challenged by the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region as well as South America. APJ (generating 23% of total spam volume) and South America (at 22%) have surpassed North America.

The researchers stated that this considerable growth in spam originating from South America and the APJ region is quite significant; however, it is not altogether astonishing when one thinks the huge increase in Internet subscriptions in these regions during the last few years.

Related article: India Remains an Easy Target for Hackers in '06

» SPAMfighter News - 11/21/2009