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HTML Attachment Spam Campaign Spiked During Recent Months

According to the statistics revealed by security firm Sophos, spam campaigns generating spam e-mails with malicious attachments have been insistently making round on the internet, especially during June to September 2010. They contributed around 2-8% of total spam e-mails.

The security firm stated that this threat particularly became uncontrollable in the months of June and September (2010). These tags accounted for around 8% of all e-mail threats, thus making June and September the worst hit months with spam campaigns.

On the contrary, July and August (2010) witnessed average distribution levels of spam e-mails as they accounted for 2% and 3% respectively. Though low, rate is still considerable.

Furthermore, security experts at Sophos think that these infected HTML attachments can be further divided into two subdivisions: Malicious JavaScript redirectors and phishing attachments.

The firm stated that, in June (2010), a huge amount of malicious spam e-mails with enclosed HTML attachments (identified as Troj/JSRedir-BO), were linked with Facebook password resetting functions, Skype, and the FIFA World Cup. Besides, the firm noted that it noticed additional series of mass-spammed JavaScript redirectors in H2-September (2010), which had been acknowledged as JS/WndRed-B.

Meanwhile, to avoid identification, phishing scammers continued to modify the pattern of phishing scam propagation. A huge amount of phishing scam e-mails targeting financial organizations such as Banche di Credito Cooperativo and PayPal, were sent in the past few months. The firm notes that, instead of establishing a fake financial website, phishers added the phishing content straight away into the HTML attachment, the firm explains.

Commenting on its own findings, the SophosLabs stated that, though the HTML attachment spam campaigns had been increasing during the past few months, from their point of view; the campaigns had been irregular in their circulation pattern. They have no reason to believe that this inconsistence circulation pattern is possible to change in the coming few months," as reported by Softpedia on October 5, 2010.

Related article: Hotmail Account Holders Vulnerable to Latest E-mail Scam

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