SINGAPORE, 16 DECEMBER 2008 – Be it terrorism or holiday season, spammers find a way to ride the tide, says Symantec in its monthly state of spam report.
The security solutions company’s report says that spammers recently sent spam messages with subjects referring to the Mumbai attacks. But the content of these messages were offering medication.
“This spam technique of using recent tragic news events has become a staple tactic for spammers,” the report notes. “Among others events, spammers targeted the Burma cyclone and Chinese Earthquake earlier this year.”
The company advised e-mail users not to click on links found in such spam e-mails.
Less spam from shutdown of web host
On a positive note, however, Symantec mentioned that the shutting down of web hosting company McColo on 11 November, 2008 has resulted in lower spam volumes.
According to the report, the percentage of e-mail identified as spam dropped significantly due to the shutdown of McColo, which was allegedly hosting a significant number of botnet command-and-control systems. The volume change was measured directly in the Symantec probe network, which saw a 65 per cent drop in traffic when comparing the 24 hours prior to the McColo.com shutdown to the 24 hours after.
However, it also highlighted that recent spikes in spam volume indicate that a return to normal spam activity is in the works.
Spam war not over, watch out for holiday-themed spams
While spam may have lost this battle, the spam war is certainly not over, according to Symantec.
The security firm has advised people to watch out for holiday-themed spams, especially ‘Christmas’. The top ten seasonal spam subject lines observed between October and November 2008 include the following:
1. Best sales 2008!
2. Spend less this Christmas
3. A really good gift
4. Christmas specials
5. Christmas promo few days left
6. Gifts for Christmas
7. Holiday luxury gifts
8. Hot Christmas specials
9. Most affordable gifts
10. Low Christmas pricing
The company noted that image spam is making a comeback and it could spell trouble for unprotected mail infrastructures.
“While image spam has not yet regained the dizzying heights of 2007 (when 52 per cent of all spam was image spam), in November 2008, image spam hit a maximum of 10 per cent of all spam messages,” noted the report.
Other popular spam themes include US presidential spam campaigns, IRS, foreign language spams and spam promoting online casinos.
