Swine Flu Spam Raises Total Spam in May 2009

According to security company McAfee's spam report for June 2009 released on June 1, 2009, spammers once again used the topic of swine flu to distribute spam mails among innocent people.

The statistics in the report indicate that spam using swine flu as a topic accounted for 3% of the total spam during May 2009. Consequently, such spam leapt from zero to noticeably high levels as spammers took advantage of the epidemic scare and dispatched e-mails offering a wide range of things including health alerts from various governments to drugs meant for saving life.

However, several websites that put 'swine influenza' in their headings to entice end-users were identified as general pharmacy sites of Canada promoting products for genital enhancement, said the report.

Reportedly, spam is using phishing in its best form i.e. 'brand hijacking' or topics and pictures lifted from news headlines. Spam amounts increased at a mean rate of 9% since late May 2009, taking volumes to the pre-McColo shutdown level.

Adam Wosotowsky, Principal Engineer for the Tactical Response Team, McAfee Avert Labs, cautioned users against the increasing sophistication of spam campaigns. According to him, attackers often hijack accounts and cash in on well-branded sources of news to make their campaigns look legitimate, as reported by ChannelWeb on June 1, 2009.

Moreover, Wosotowsky urged users to exercise caution. He added that because of improved spam filters, people might find less malicious e-mails in their mailboxes; however, that doesn't mean that they can shrug their responsibility regarding their e-mail and enabling spammers to exploit the situation.

Wosotowsky further thinks that users are increasingly falling victim since cunning spammers compromise well-established brands in attempts to make users give away confidential information.

The report also states that spammers need to decide whether to send a limited number of bigger-sized e-mails that are less likely to be caught, or a large number of smaller e-mails that have high possibilities of getting caught.

Meanwhile, some spam trends compared to others declined during May 2009 like the Obama spam that shot up following the November 2008 elections, plunged a dramatic 90% after the 'January 2009 inaugural ceremony.

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» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2009