Kaspersky Says that Spam Traffic Surges in October 2013

IT security firm Kaspersky has published its 'Spam in October 2013' Report which shows a rise of 6.6% percentage points in unsolicited and malicious emails taking spam's share of global email traffic to 72.5% for October 2013.

This is not surprising as cybercriminals leveraged the clash in Syria in an attempt to dupe unsuspicious Internauts into transferring them money. In October 2013, we (referring to Kaspersky) continued to see new instances of bogus emails.

For instance, mass mailing was spotted purporting to be from a woman of the renowned 'peace-keeping mission' of Syria trying to form a somber relationship with email recipient. At first glance, it seemed a naïve attempt to form friends but when the cybercriminals achieved the confidence of the victim, the 'pen-pal' instantaneously knocked a problem that could be resolved with only money transfers from their so called new friends.

Also, holidays like Halloween always represent good opportunity for spammers. In October 2013, Kaspersky noted a German language-based Halloween spam mailing wherein spammers circulated emails promoting casinos that provided Halloween bonuses with some companies offering holiday concessions. The junk mails had a diverse Halloween-theme and the topic usually had the word "Halloween".

October 2013 also saw a massive surge in Christmas-based spam as Internauts begin to make preparations for the forthcoming holidays as English worded Christmas mailings publicized replica of fashionable watches or complimentary loans; Santa-shaped USBs (Universal Serial Bus) or sweeties bearing holiday logos or messages were offered to organizations as gifts for their customers.

Also regarding phishing, the percentage of phishing emails in global spam traffic accounted for 0.027 in October 2013.

And regarding geographical distribution of spam sources in October 2013, China remained at number one source of spam followed by the U, South Korea, Taiwan and Russia.

Asia (56.4%) once again became the foremost regional junk email source in October 2013, in terms of global spam sources, regardless of a slight fall(-2.4 percentage points) in cybercriminal activity and North America stood at second position after dispersing 19% of global junk emails. In the meantime, share of Eastern Europe went up to 3.8 percentage points with average of 16%, placing it at third position.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/29/2013