Botnets Topped E-threats for November 09

Internet security company 'AppRiver' has recently published a report which sums up the e-threats noticed by the company during November 2009. AppRiver states that it observed an extremely large virus traffic at the start of November 2009. This traffic was supported by the Trojan Zeus, also called Zbot.

During November 2009, three major incidents happened on account of Zeus. According to the first, fake e-mails from Vodafone and Verizon to inform recipients that their credit balances had surpassed limit caused lots of disturbance. The second incident included sending of Trojan-laced e-mails to recipients informing them that their e-mail accounts had been deactivated. According to the third, recipients received an e-mail supposedly sent by a friend saying someone had placed their photographs on the Internet, but on hitting web-link for viewing the photos, users downloaded Zbot.

With Conficker completing one year, people noticed virus' unbelievable rate of proliferation. On November 13, 2009, an e-mail posing as a message from Microsoft started circulating on the Net which promised to scan as well as clean users' computers off the Conficker virus. The particular spam mail reportedly got delivered from the Pushdo botnet.

Strangely enough, an almost same spam campaign was dispatched one month earlier on October 19, 2009. antivirus companies stated that the spam campaign was running by Bredo botnet.

Security researchers state that Zeus, Pushdo and Bredo appeared quite often, depicting strange similarities. These similarities have made many specialists believe that a common group of criminals is controlling or has written all these three malware.

Apart from these botnets, November 2009 witnessed holiday spam. Since buying and selling time is nearly on, fraudulent e-mails advertising gift items and other products along with price cuts appeared extensively during November 2009. Security researchers state that the month represents a lucrative period for cyber criminals when they try to make money using spam.

In the end, the security specialists at AppRiver report that during November 2009, malware writers did brisk business although when the month began to end their productivity headed towards a decline.

Related article: Botnet Misuses Google Analytics

» SPAMfighter News - 12/9/2009