Spam and Phishing

While many are still in shock after the Boston Marathon bombings on 16 April, it didn’t take long for cyber criminals to abuse that tragic incident for their dirty deeds.
Today we already started receiving emails containing links to malicious locations with names like “news.html”.

A large number of scam emails disguised as newsletters sent by the CNN television channel have been detected again. Sensational headlines are used in the messages to grab the attention of recipients (e.g., falling stock indexes, the election of a new Pope etc.). Users are asked to click on the links provided in the messages

Right after I published my previous post about malware ongoing campaign on Skype, a mate from Venezuela sent me a screenshot of her Skype client with a similar campaign in terms or propagation but different in origins and purposes.

There is a new malicious ongoing campaign on Skype. It’s active and kicking yet.

The percentage of spam in email traffic was up 12.8 percentage points compared with January and averaged 71.1%.

On March 4th we spotted a large number of unusual emails being blocked by our Linux Mail Security product.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup has already kicked off, at least for Brazilian bad guys, acting as one of the most prominent tactics used by Latin American cybercriminals.

This is the topic that cybercriminals are speculating about and using as a hook to infect victims. The campaign is based on the Blackhole v2.0

The percentage of spam in email traffic was down 7.7 percentage points compared with December and averaged 58.3%

In the world of espionage, a ‘honey trap’ traditionally involves a seductive encounter designed to coax information out of an agent, or to compromise him in his work.

The percentage of spam in email traffic was up 3.1 percentage points from November and averaged 66%.

The amount of spam fell throughout the course of the entire year. At the close of 2012, the percentage of spam settled at 72.1%, or 8.2% less than in 2011.

Spammers and scammers always take advantage of holidays and hot news. As we approach the Christmas and New Year holidays, spammers now have more reasons and opportunities to advertise their goods and services in spam.

Before 2012, there were only two instances of cyber weapons being used – Stuxnet and Duqu. However, analysis of these two forced the IT community to dramatically expand the whole concept of what cyber warfare entails

The percentage of spam in email traffic was down 4.5 percentage points from September and averaged 68%.