Cisco Sworn in Brazil as Top Spammer This Year

Online security company 'Cisco' released its latest annual report on December 8, 2009 according to which, 7.7 Trillion spam mails emanated from Brazil till November 2009. The volume was almost threefold that of 2008. Consequently, the country surpassed USA, which pushed 6.6 Trillion junk e-mails during the same time, falling from 8.3 Trillion messages during 2008.

However, the spam surge in Brazil isn't a mystery. Patrick Peterson, Security Researcher at Cisco, says that the epidemic in the country is the same as that inflicting other rapidly developing countries as they go online, as reported by Alibaba on December 8, 2009.

The researcher further pointed out that the broadband rollout in Brazil was extremely fast but simultaneously, the country lacked user awareness, firewalls, antivirus software and ISP programs. But these were adequately placed in the USA that cut spam levels, as reported by Techradar on December 8, 2009.

A large volume of spam emanating from a developing country doesn't apply to Brazil alone. In India too, a good 3.6 Trillion e-mails were sent out as spam during 2009, which was more than twofold of its 2008 volume, according to Cisco.

Nevertheless, both these countries have no direct relation with the overall spam surges when their inhabitants go online. In reality, it is possible that global cyber criminals are exploiting these countries because domain registration is cheap here and there are numerous unsecured computers that open doors for funneling bulk unsolicited e-mails round the world.

Moreover, another developing country - China - also suffers from the problem of spam apart from the US and Brazil, although here the level has gone down 25% in 2009 from the volume in 2008. Peterson states that owing to the communist type of government, China can mandate its Internet Service Providers to stop allowing spam mails to get through or else face penalty.

Henry Stern, Senior Security Researcher at Cisco, also said that the increasing levels of spam were disturbing. According to him, the spam flood indicated a higher percentage of hijacked computers, implying that malware especially banking trojans could escalate, as reported by AFP on December 8, 2009.

Related article: Cisco Finds Two Vulnerabilities and Recommends for Patches

» SPAMfighter News - 12/18/2009