3. 9/11 Strikes Again
The worst terrorist attack on US soil seven years ago is still being misused by spammers. Like every year, this year we saw a huge spike close to September 11th. The global email and spam volumes on September 11 climbed to record levels that we have not seen since late March of this year.

Volume had been decreasing during spring and summer after the March records, but began rising again in August and September.

The increase on September 11, however, was so significant that the TrustedSource reputation sensors detected a 15 percent increase from the day before. In reality, this is not surprising as this 15 percent increase in spam volume has consistently been the case year after year. It is a shame that some people do not spare this day.

Gibberish Spam
Several spam campaigns worldwide were responsible for the growth in spam volume close to 9/11. The usual suspects included the spam for male enhancement products, replica products, pharmacy marketing, and mortgage products. Among them, however, is a new spam attack that has caught the attention of our researchers.

The spam emails appear to have no obvious purpose since they don't contain any web site links or actual content other than the random character strings in subject and body.

Letter to Administrators - Beware of blended threats and increasing spam volumes
September has seen a steady rise in traffic as predicted. We are now at a constant cruising volume equivalent to the heights of April, with traffic spikes that go up 20-25 percent higher than that cruising volume.

In the next two months we should expect to see those 20-25 percent spikes become the new cruising volume and we may even see a slight draw-back in December.

We've seen the E-card spam coming back, which should stay constant through January. Expect Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas spam strains to occur in the weeks around those holidays.