Sudden Surge in Malicious E-mail Attachments Raise Brows

The ramification of uncanny demeanor of malicious e-mail attachments since August 2011 is beyond imagination, according to Internet security firm, Commtouch, reports networkworld on September 15, 2011.

As revealed by Commtouch, since August 2011, cyber criminals have circulated millions of systems throughout the world with malicious attachment. But it seems that this spam is different from the typical type of spam and the campaign is rather directed to cause massive malware explosion.

However, security experts resort that the motive behind such a large-scale campaign taking a toll since August 8, 2o11 is still not clear, as published in infosecurity on September 16, 2011.

Meanwhile, experts at Commtouch while analyzing infected mails revealed that the technique seems to be quite adoptive from the old as evident from UPS/Fedex, the map of love, and the hotel charge error. For instance, the map of love though lures to provide information in details about interesting global sites with the display of a PDF icon, but ironically, it is actually an executable file.

The security vendor however acclaimed that though the UPS/FedEx infections are not a new tactic, it is quite distinctive that they are still effective. A notification of a package is received by the recipients or even the promise of feeding more details is attached in a notice.

Furthermore, it has been noticed that malicious attachment touched the peak of 25 Billion on a single day in mid-August 2011, accounting to five times increase as affirmed by Commtouch. This pattern was however predicted just after malware circulation through attachment touched the highest peak in August 2011.

Large malware outbreaks have resulted in the expansion of botnets in the past which were then been used to send large volumes of spam. Thus it is evident that the aim of malware distribution in the past was to increase the distribution of spam but it is not the same as of now, reveals Commtouch.

Nevertheless, Commtouch speculates that the investigations are still on and it speculates that the augment in the malware attachment to e-mails might be manifested for larger attacks like the distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks, steal banking credentials or stealing social networking site IDs, and passwords.

Related article: Sydney-based Woman Lost Money Online to Trojan

» SPAMfighter News - 9/28/2011