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October 28, 2008
U.S. Ranks First in Spam Relays, Russia Gaining Fast
By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor
IT security and control firm Sophos has released the results of its research into the latest spam (junk e-mail) trends, showing what they say are the top twelve spam-relaying countries for the third quarter of 2008.
The figures show what the firm characterizes as “an alarming rise in the proportion of spam e-mails sent with malicious attachments between July - September 2008,” as well as an increase in spam attacks “using social engineering techniques to snare unsuspecting computer users.”
Sophos’s research finds that “one in every 416 e-mail messages between July and September contained a dangerous attachment, designed to infect the recipient’s computer.” Company officials call this “a staggering eight-fold rise compared to the previous quarter where the figure stood at only one in every 3,333 e-mails.”
Much of this increase, Sophos says, can be attributed to several large-scale malware attacks made by spammers during the period. “The worst single attack was the Agent-HNY Trojan horse, which was spammed out disguised as the Penguin Panic arcade game for Apple (News - Alert) iPhones. Other major incidents included the EncPk-CZ Trojan, which pretended to be a Microsoft security patch, and the Invo-Zip malware, which masqueraded as a notice of a failed parcel delivery from firms such as UPS.”
Windows users opening any of these attachments exposed their PCs to the risk of infection and potentially put their identity and finances at risk. The most widespread attacks seen by Sophos are not designed to run on Unix and Mac OS X: “For Apple Mac and Unix lovers, these major spam attacks just mean a clogged-up inbox, not an infected operating system,” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
“The naivety shown by many Internet users is downright dangerous,” Cluley said. “In the past, hackers were more like teenage mischief-makers breaking into sheds to see what they could find. Today, they are hardened criminals wearing hobnail boots with no qualms about breaking into your home and stealing everything they can get their hands on.”
Oh, the Dirty Dozen? The good ol’ U.S. of A. relays 19 percent of the world’s spam, Russia handles 8.3 percent (4.4 percent last year), Turkey’s third with 8.2, and at six percent or under, in order, are China (including Hong Kong), Brazil, South Korea, India, Argentina, Italy, the United Kingdom, Colombia and Thailand, all combining for 66 percent of the world’s spam.
According to Sophos researchers, there is no sign that recent legal action by the authorities against major spam gangs have had any perceptible impact on the amount of spam in circulation.
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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.
Edited by Mae Kowalke
