The Daily Routine in the Life of a Spammer

Unsolicited email, commonly known as spam, has been security and nuisance issue since long. IBM released a research report today which reveals insight of the work habits of the largest spam operators which turns out the typical spam workweek is closely aligned with regular business hours.

IBM analysed 6 months of data from Dec. 2016 to June 2017 and revealed that more than 83% of all spam is sent on weekday.

IBM X-Force Kassel is the research team which operates huge spam honeypots as well as monitor, collect data from lots of unwanted emails each year. Now, mapping trend can be done more easily as such heavy amount of spam is coming in. Recently, we had a look at one while analyzing the workweek of the spammer.

The aim of the analysis was delving into 6 months data to find out when the spammers and also their spam bots does most of the work, by weekdays as well as by hour range. Securityintelligence.com posted on August 21st, 2017, stating that it was also aimed looking on the countries from where the spam originates for finding out from where hardest-working spammers goes for launching its malicious schemes.

This trend also coincides with focus of various malware families, like ransomware and banking trojans, to target the organizations and just not only indiscriminate users by the email accounts. The trojans like TrickBot, Dridex and OakBot are malwares owned by cybergang, which are designed for robbing bank accounts of businesses. Moreover, these gangs ensure to spam the employees in pointed attacks of malicious mail, especially during the time when potential new victims are more expected to open their incoming emails.

IBM X-Force found that they normally act as businesses as spam campaigns are mainly used to collect cash illegally with operators planning their workdays around official hours.

Currently, malware is more sophisticated than ever and its delivery methods are not falling short. Spammers and spam botnets launch millions of malicious messages every day, expecting to reach potential victims, infect new endpoints, assault another organization and keep progressing the cash laundromat which drives cybercrime. Defenders can manage risk in a better way and keep their organizations safer from spam by learning their methods and tracking their activity.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/28/2017