Spam and Phishing

In Q2 2015, the percentage of spam in email traffic accounted for 53.4%. The USA (14.6%) and Russia (7.8%) remained the biggest sources of spam. China came third with 7.1%. The Anti-Phishing system was triggered 30,807,071 times on computers of Kaspersky Lab users.

Old tricks never die, and bad guys know that. We recently saw a big wave of malicious VBE files targeting Brazilian users, distributed via email messages.

In the second quarter of 2015 Kaspersky Lab solutions detected and repelled a total of 379,972,834 malicious attacks from online resources. There were 5,903,377 registered notifications about attempted malware infections aiming at stealing money via online access to bank accounts. Were detected 291,887 new malicious mobile programs.

The security flaws of the OAuth protocol have been known for quite a while. However, this is the first time we have come across a phishing email used by fraudsters to put these techniques into practice.

The share of spam in email traffic in the first quarter of 2015 was 59.2%; the percentage of spam gradually declined during the quarter. Spam traffic included a large number of mass mailings with Microsoft Word or Excel attachments containing macro viruses.

In the first quarter of 2015 Kaspersky Lab products detected a total of 2,2 bln malicious attacks and more than 93 mln unique malicious URLs. The story of the powerful Equation cyberespionage group was perhaps the most talked-about news story of Q1.

In 2014, the proportion of spam in email traffic was 66.76%, which is 2.84 percentage points lower than in the previous year. Spam levels have fallen consistently from a peak of 85.2% in 2009. This is due to the fact that adverts for legal goods and services are abandoning spam in favor of more effective legal advertising platforms.

In Sweden, we’re facing a big issue with scammers trying to buy items for sale on various auction websites. Since one of these scammers tried to scam my wife, I decided to follow their scam and document the entire process.

Last night I got a unexpected SMS in German language on one of my phones. A message from “Lisa”, pretending to know me, including an url luring the reader to a picture of her.

In 2013 we registered a sudden surge in the number of attacks targeting users’ financial information and money. In 2014, the situation changed considerably: the number of attacks and attacked users significantly decreased, as did the amount of financial phishing.

Over the last decade DKIM signatures have become an important technology in the extensive list of methods for fighting against spam. In this article we investigate the structure of DKIM, reveal the main advantages and downsides of this technology and explore typical spammers’ tricks for forging DKIM signatures.

A few days ago we came across an excellent example of a mass mailing where spammers took full advantage of this universal fascination with destruction.

By closely observing more than 60 threat actors responsible for APT attacks worldwide, the team of experts has now compiled a list of the top emerging threats in the APT world. We think these will play an important role in 2015.

The end of the year is traditionally a time for reflection – for taking stock of our lives before considering what lies ahead. We’d like to offer our customary retrospective of the key events that shaped the threat landscape in 2014.

This section of the report forms part of the Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2014 and is based on data obtained and processed using Kaspersky Security Network (KSN). Kaspersky Lab products detected and neutralized a total of 6,167,233,068 threats during the reported period.