McAfee’s (www.mcafee.com) security techniques research division, Avert Labs, has released its second monthly spam report, which “E-ticket” airline scam, misuse of free hosting services, and the increase of Chinese spam have topped the security provider’s list of online threats.
According to McAfee’s Spam Report – February 2009 (Link to the Report), the last month has been the area under discussion to a highly effectual airline email malware campaign that scam activities users into giving away their personal information. The subject line begins with “E-ticket” followed by a number, and the mail body appears to confirm the acquisition of a paperless airline ticket. (Thedentalspa) The McAfee document said this is a “intellectual bit of social engineering that relies on the fear of having one’s personal details (identity) stolen,” leading sufferers to click on the attached file without thinking, leading them to download the file that infects the system with the ZBot Trojan.
Another major style that has increased in the last month is scammers hijacking spaces on Microsoft’s live.com. “We took a sample of libido-enhancing spam more than a period of 48 hours and found all of it contained URLs pointing to Windows live.com sites,” the report said, and at the same time they note down that Microsoft had already disabled 13 percent of the related links, even given their attention, 87 percent of these sites remained active. In addition, the Microsoft name offers the appearance of legitimacy.
At last, McAfee made note of a fashion that has been long in the creation due to the rising Internet use in Asia. With its rise in number of users, China is overtaking the US spam racket in supplying the world’s spam. According to the state-controlled China Internet Network Information Center, China is on the way to quickly overtake the US in the number of Internet users. These computers are necessary to be infected by malware, which are used to spread spam messages.
Most interesting thing is that China’s overall amount of zombie computers is down, and McAfee said it’s not clear what’s happening in China, but the huge amount of infected systems are no longer being used for that purpose.
“Although Chinese computers are not being used for spam they way they were last year, we’re seeing a resurgence which is now putting them in the lead, ahead of the US,” McAfee Avert Labs senior vice president Jeff Green said in a statement. “Also, although these zombie computers aren’t being used for spam, you have to wonder if they’re being used for another purpose.”
In January, McAfee launched its first spam report (Report for January) in a monthly series that promises to chronicle spam trends and specific campaigns.