WikiLeaks Shapes Spam Scenario during December 2010

According to the Monthly Spam Report of Kaspersky Lab for December 2010, spammers worldwide took advantage of the popularity of Wikileaks during December 2010, as reported by CBR Online on February 3, 2011.

Security analysts at Kaspersky recorded several mass mailings requesting netizens to forward Wikileaks links during December 2010. Besides, spammers made use of the WikiLeaks name in backdrop noise texts to evade spam filters.

Interestingly, India was reported as the main source of spam. It accounted for around 10% of the total amount of spam. Russia, on the other hand, stood at the second position. Russia was followed by Italy, Vietnam, and Brazil.

However, according to the report, the volume of spam from Western Europe considerably declined. The UK, on the contrary, accounted for around 4.3%, France for 2.2%, and Germany for 1.8% amount of spam.

The nations, which were identified as the most malware circulating (via e-mails) nations were India, Russia, and Vietnam.

The study also stated that the lawful war on botnets one more time came at the front during December 2010 with illegal proceedings being prompted in the USA in the case of Russian citizen Oleg Nikolaenko, who was suspected of developing and circulating the Mega-D zombie network, which is also known as Ozdok. The systems infected with this botnet were utilized to propagate partner spam including medications related and counterfeit designer goods advertisements. It is asserted that at its peak the network's zombies could circulate up to 30-35% of the global spam.

Apart from the above mentioned findings, the report stated that during December 2010, the popularity of spam categories followed the trends prevailing during the in autumn.

Viagra's banishment continued: the amount of pharmaceutical spam declined by 0.8 percentage points in contrast to November 2010 and averaged 28.6%. The volume of spam circulated in the other categories was affected by malware writers discarding pharmaceutical spam and by the law enforcement activity surrounding botnets circulating this kind of spam.

Furthermore, according to the report, the festive season theme was dynamically exploited by the malware circulators. During the first week of December (2010) the amount of e-mails that mentioned Christmas and New Year surpassed 6% and continued to increase. Conclusively, the report stated that festive season spam averaged 20-25% of the total volume of spam during December (2010).

Related article: WikiLeaks Spam Mails Push Malware: Symantec

» SPAMfighter News - 2/10/2011