author: programming

Latest Security News | SecurityExtra.com

Spam in August: Cybercriminals find new ways to disguise spam

Posted: 20 Sep 2011 12:41 PM PDT

The volume of spam in mail traffic in August 2011 decreased slightly compared to July and averaged 80%, according to Kaspersky Lab's latest spam report. It used to be that malicious attachments came in emails with erotic photos of girls who "want to meet you", or "scandalous photos" of celebrities. Now, cybercriminals are disguising their messages to make them look like official notifications or business correspondence. In particular, spammers now like to send out fake notifications for postal services such as UPS, FedEx, and DHL stating that they were unable to deliver a package and that the recipient needs to pick it up from the office immediately, or that the recipient's address was filled out incorrectly. The messages contain a ZIP archive file that allegedly contains the forms needed to collect the package. In actual fact the attachments contain various types of malicious programs. "These changes to how malicious emails are sent are linked to the fact that most users do not expect to find malware in business emails," explains Maria Namestnikova, Senior Spam Analyst at Kaspersky Lab. "Erotic photos of girls 'waiting to meet you' can be found all over the Internet, while a company's internal documents are more [...]