Spam Traffic Augments by 0.9% Points during March 2011

Security firm, Kaspersky Lab recently released its spam report for March 2011. According to the report, the volume of spam in e-mail traffic augmented by 0.9% points in comparison to February and reached to an average of 79.6%.

Further, armed conflicts of Libya were the most exploited themes for the cybercriminals. These events and political activities also resulted in the emergence of malware: spammers utilized the tried and tested way of dispatching e-mail messages with links to the 'recent' news from Libya.

As per Kaspersky, the most remarkable development was the appearance during March 2011 of politically provoked messages regarding various events and activities in Libya.

Such kind of messages generally quotes blog posts or articles from newspaper. These types of messages are written in English, which clearly indicates that the target audience is not the Libyan population. These kinds of spam attempts are mainly targeted at catching the attention of the US and European netizens are dispatched by the supporters of the ruling party and their opponents.

Further, as per the report, the collective attempts of Microsoft and the US law enforcement agencies during mid-March (2011) had led to the shutdown of the Rustock spam botnet.

Rustock first emerged on the Internet during 2006 and as per few estimates, was accountable for nearly 30-40% of the total spam. Shutdown of the botnet was declared on 17 March, via the operation itself happened a day before.

Kaspersky Lab's security experts noted a decline in the amount of spam during 17 - 20 March (2011). During this time, spam volume in mail traffic decreased by 3% points in comparison to the average figure for the first half of March, 2011. The total number of spam e-mails decreased by around 15% points. Kaspersky further reported that, however, on 22 March, 2011, a rise was noticed in the amount of spam traffic.

Further, during March, India maintained its top position as the most famous source of spam, accounting for around 11.42% of the entire spam amount (an augment of 2.59% points). Brazil stood at the second ran, with around 6.6% of the total spam volume, an augment of 2% points in comparison to February's figures. Russia was at the third rank and circulated the similar volume of spam as in February i.e. 4.8%.

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