Spam Getting Increasingly Malicious: Cluley

Senior Technology Consultant Graham Cluley for Sophos stated that spam mails were getting increasingly malicious via connecting with websites created for contaminating PCs with a Trojan alternatively seeking for theft of credentials like banking login information through phishing. Ontrack Data Recovery published this on October 19, 2010.

Given the above situation, Cluley added that people should therefore use anti-spam software programs while working on their PCs.

A new research that Sophos the software security company conducted found that spam mails originating out of the U.S was responsible for 18.6% of worldwide e-mail junk during Q3 i.e. July-September 2010, an increase of 3.4% over Q2 i.e. April-June 2010.

United States is the top country in the generation as well as distribution of the total spam, which suffocates PCs and networks on all time basis like second, minute, hour and day. During Q2 2010, the United States was responsible for 15.2% of all unwanted adverts promoting penis enlargement drugs and hormones for human growth while the country is currently pushing 20% of all such ads.

India is on No.2, pushing 7.6% of the worldwide spam, Brazil contributes 5.7%, France - 5.4% and the United Kingdom is marked the 5th greatest distributor of spam having pushed 5% of the total e-mail junk during Q3 2010. The remaining countries listed among the ten most spam generating nations are Germany at 3.4%, South Korea and Russia with 3% each, Vietnam at 2.9% and Italy at 2.8%.

Cluley states that hackers invade PCs for the dispatch of their spam mails. Unsurprisingly, spammers control vast numbers of hijacked PCs from the remote while their true owners remain unaware, he adds. Computech published this on October 25, 2010.

Cluley explains that the spammers operate in the above manner because of the different events that develop within the Information Technology industry.

Meanwhile, Sophos as well enlightens on spam increases that originated from websites for social networking during Q3 2010. During September 2010, a certain scam targeted users of Twitter, which diverted them onto 3rd-party spam websites in case they merely brushed their mouse on a web-link indicated inside a tweet.

Related article: Spam Scam Bags a Scottish Connection

» SPAMfighter News - 11/3/2010