Kaspersky Lab: Despite the fact that most businesses were in a lull in the summer months, there was a significant increase in the number of spam messages containing financial phishing in July, according to the latest report from Kaspersky Lab. Specifically, there was a 7.9 percentage point increase in the number of spam emails that exploited the names of reputable banks, payment services, online stores and similar organizations for illegal purposes. As a result, these messages represented almost 42% of all phishing. Cybercriminals seemed to focus their attention more on PayPal, with reports for this service showing the most dramatic increase in the number of alerts generated by the anti-phishing functions of Kaspersky Lab.
The organizations that were the most frequent targets of phishers by category – July 2014
Overall, the share of spam in total email traffic increased by 2.2 percentage points in July, reaching 67%. The United States once again topped the list of countries of origin for spam, with around one-sixth (15.3%) of all global spam originating from this country. Russia once again maintained its second place in the ranking, with 5.6% of all spam originating there. However, this is 1.4 percentage points lower than in June. China remains in third place, with 5.3% of spam .
In terms of spam topics, summer left its mark. In particular, in Russia there was a significant increase in spam advertising sun protection products and heat-related products. There was also an increase in the number of spam emails referring to various “summer products”, such as air conditioners, fans, window tints, bottled water and sunglasses.
Summer also means vacations. Since everyone wants to look their best on the beach, spammers have taken advantage of this trend. Thus, several spam messages appeared advertising skin care cosmetics, as well as seasonal sales of beauty shops and salons. Kaspersky Lab experts also discovered a video that supposedly revealed “beauty secrets” from a famous stylist.
Spammers did not ignore corporate users, even though business activity was not at its peak in July. In the middle of summer, cybercriminals specializing in distributing advertising emails decided to attract the attention of Russian Internet users with offers related to organizing corporate events outdoors and recreational activities near water environments.
“In the summer, business activity slows down and spammers turn to more profitable activities – including some malicious campaigns. As a result, spam messages with criminal intent increase, which poses greater risks to users. In this context, in July we noticed that spammers became more interested in the financial services sector. Moreover, for the first time in a long time, the first place in the ranking of the most widespread malicious attachments in spam messages was taken by a Trojan downloader, which is used to intercept sensitive data,” commented Tatyana Shcherbakova, spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab , regarding the July statistics .
Kaspersky Lab 's full spam trends report for July is available on Securelist.com .
