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Spammers Increase Attacks on Hosted Services

MessageLabs, an Internet security firm, has released malware figures for October 2008 and found that the percentage of malware and other malicious program hosting websites surged by nearly 50%, while the spam declined by less than 1%. MessageLabs further revealed that though spam dropped marginally, spam activities exploiting hosted services increased.

As per the Intelligence Report of MessageLabs for October 2008, the number of spam messages coming from fake MobileMe accounts and spam blogs on Blogspot of Google surged significantly due to easier access to tools that help scammers to overcome Completely Automated Public Turning Tests to tell Computers and Human Apart (CAPTCHA) anti-spam techniques.

Maksym Schipka, antivirus Technical Architect, MessageLabs, says that the awareness level about online security threat is rising among firms and they are spending a good deal of money on tackling these threats, but cyber-criminals are one step ahead, as reported by vnunet on October 30, 2008.

The report further disclosed that the volume of phishing e-mails surged from 14% to 59% of the total e-mail-based malware threats recorded in October 2008. Moreover, with worsening global financial crisis in October 2008, phishers increased their attacks duping banks. Moreover, in the period spanning from September to October 2008, phishers tried to capitalize on the confusion about mergers and bailouts, resulting in a phenomenal increase of 103% in phishing attacks by volume.

Furthermore, Halloween provides an excellent opportunity to spammers to send appropriately themed spam. spammers have modified the subject titles of traditional e-mails this year with Halloween sales and advertising sexual enhancement drugs and herbal remedies. In fact, such kinds of e-mails are part of a big campaign that creates nearly 1% of spam with the same text in the body in each case.

Meanwhile, spammers are exploiting current headlines and holidays to deceive users who have become careless of their systems' security. It is possible that spam emerging this month is a trailer to what will follow in coming months. spammers seem to make preparation for upcoming months, said MessageLabs.

MessageLabs also suggested to firms that they should use rate-limiting techniques to make their anti-spam defense stronger. This ensures that only a limited number of e-mail addresses are registered with an IP address.

Related article: Spammers Continue their Campaigns Successfully

» SPAMfighter News - 11/19/2008

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