PayPal, Phishers’ Most Targeted Item During May 2011: Kaspersky

Kaspersky Labs, which recently issued its May 2011 spam activity report, states that PayPal the online payment system continued to occupy the first position (23.28%) among the ten organizations which phishers attacked most during May 2011. Online auction site EBay, meanwhile, once again occupied the second position following a short break during April 2011.

Moreover, Kaspersky states that amongst the total phishing e-mails, 4.67% messages were crafted for theft of passwords for RuneScape the well-known freely available Internet game. Cyber-criminals were interested in the gaming firm more than they were for the user credentials on Facebook the widely browsed social-networking website. RuneScape reportedly, ranked No.3 on Kaspersky's Top Ten List, the study indicates.

Also alongside phishing, Kaspersky's report discusses spamming during May 2011 in contrast with those of April 2011. Thus, the security company finds that spam volume within total e-mail rose 2.1%, while its mean rate was 82.9%. Securelist.com reported this during the 3rd-week of June 2011

Further, during May 2011, the greatest generator of spam continued to be India at 11.35%, though it accounted for a 1.41% decline.

Meanwhile, Russia kept on sliding downwards among the countries which generated most junk e-mails. Its share declined at the rate of about 0.5% in May 2011 over April 2011, while taking it down one place. In general, the different changes of positions with respect to outbound spam mails for any country didn't surpass even 1%, indicating that stability had occurred in the rate at which the countries generating the maximum spam behaved.

Additionally according to the report, spammers exploited the death of Osama bin Laden as still one more item of current events during May 2011. The associated spam mails carried malevolent file attachments along with web-links leading onto genuine spyware. Even the perpetrators of the well-known Nigerian scam used the world's most wanted extremist's death news, underscores the report.

Finally, the report as well discusses the most vicious software disseminated through e-mail during May 2011. Accordingly, Kaspersky found such software as Trojan-Spy.HTML.Fraud.gen that contributed a little over 10% share in the entire malicious software spotted within e-mail traffic in May 2011.

Related article: Paypal – Web Hosting Services Need To Work Hard To Tackle Phishing

» SPAMfighter News - 7/1/2011