83% E-mails Were Spam in March 2010: Websense Report

Internet security firm Websense has noted in its Threat Webscape Report for March 2010 that of all e-mails detected by it during the month, 83% were spam.

Moreover, 93.7% of these junk e-mails carried an embedded URL. 0.4% of spam e-mails were phishing e-mails and 10% classified URLs embedded in the e-mails were found to be malicious.

The Websense report also highlights that spammers have abused several big and popular brands for enticing potential victims into clicking on malicious URLs in the e-mails. To illustrate this, the firm recalled the alert issued by it regarding an Apple App Store campaign, where in fraudsters abused the reputation of authentic websites to host their malicious redirects.

In addition to this, in some incidents, even client side exploits were found hosted on redirect websites. Bad guys also attempted to trick users by sending them bogus Skype toolbars for Outlook.

Besides abusing leading brand to dodge people, fraudsters are also exploiting .PDF file formats and the upcoming FIFA World Cup. According to the report, spammers were relaying targeted assaults using malicious PDF attachments. These targeted assaults involved messages themed on the World Cup along with a PDF attachment. These attachments were malware-laden and could sufficiently comprise the end-user's PC.

The two Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerabilities discovered recently in March 2010 have also been discussed in the report. One of the vulnerabilities, CVE-2010-0483 facilitated hackers to remotely execute code on the systems of IE users who are urged to press the F1 key for assistance. Another bulletin MS10-017 patches all the versions supported by Microsoft Excel at present - both on Mac and Windows systems - so as to safeguard against fraudsters tricking users into opening a harmful Excel document to infect their computers.

Finally, Websense's March 2010 report has little similarity with the February 2010 report. In February report, the security firm claimed that cybercriminals were continuously abusing Google in a bid to make their malicious links rank higher on search results related to hot topics, including Olympics, Hawaiian tsunami/Chilean earthquake, Canada's figure skater Joannie Rochette, and the Bloom Box breakthrough technology.

Related article: “Loopholes did not cause online banking thefts”: ICBC

» SPAMfighter News - 5/12/2010