Image Spam Falls, Spam Attachments Rise

According to the August 2007 "State of Spam" report by Symantec, the image spam of older times is declining while attachment spam with images is rising.

Symantec's State of Spam report for the month of August 2007 highlights that image spam comprised of just 8% of total spam in July 2007, which represents a drastic decline from the level of 52% in January 2007. But the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) spam mails were at 66% of all junk e-mails and also consistent with the level of the preceding month of July 2007.

Although image spam is continuously decreasing in number but it has not disappeared completely, stated Doug Bowers, Anti-abuse Engineering, Symantec's Senior Director. This type of spam now uses the PDF method of delivery that made its debut in June 2007. Symantec finds PDF spam within the range of 2-8% in all spam. Symantec reported this on August 7, 2007.

Symantec has outlined the different categories of spam as product promoting spams at 28%, which appears most commonly. Financial junk e-mails follow next at 18%, while Internet pitches are at 17%, health products at 13% and other scams are at 9%.

Symantec researchers also said that e-greeting card spam that has links to worms and viruses was at higher level than usual during July 2007. These types of messages targeted over 250 Million customers for Symantec. There was particularly a large size attack around July 4, 2007 that was blogged on.

Symantec further said that in July 2007, there emerged more tactics for spamming images. These techniques used ZIP and XLS files. Spam volumes of these types were low during this time; however, Symantec is monitoring the technique very closely.

According to the report, in July 2007, there was a rise in spammy URLs using the 'cn' TLD. While normally, TLDs in spammy URLs commonly used 'com' and 'net' but in July 2007, Symantec counted more than 74 Million spam mails to contain the spammy URL with 'cn' TLD. The August State of Spam report also mentions the probable reasons for this upswing.

Related article: Image Spam Set to Hit Worldwide PCs Back

» SPAMfighter News - 8/23/2007