BANGALORE, INDIA: The launch of iPhone 6, along with the Ice Bucket Challenge initiative, were the two main topics that spammers used to promote junk mailings in the third quarter. This is one of the main conclusions from Kaspersky Lab’s research into the landscape of spam threats.
Altaf Halde, Managing Director, Kaspersky Lab – South Asia said, “Spammers are becoming more intelligent in masking their messages under the garb of offering something genuine to the recipients – be it offering iPhone 6 or offerings to conduct marketing campaign that will develop business and attract new clients. Once unsuspecting users have clicked or downloaded the email attachment, Trojans are downloaded without the user’s knowledge, which are capable of stealing data or even holding the data at ransom (encrypting the data and demanding money to decrypt the data, like CryptoLocker).”
“With regards to spam, we now expect to see a sharp rise in the percentage of spam dedicated to Christmas and New Year festivities until it reaches its December peak.”
Spam accounted for 66.9% of all email traffic in Q3. The US (14% of spam), Russia (6.1%) and Vietnam (6%) were the three biggest sources of spam in Q3. India ranked 6th in source of world's spam, sending almost 3.43% of unwanted mail.
Phishing that targeted online financial services accounted for 38.23% of all detections registered by Kaspersky Lab products. That is 13.39 p.p. more than in Q2. Phishing against banks showed the highest growth rate in the financial category: + 6.16 p.p. The vast majority of phishing detections in the payment systems category were targeting users of PayPal (32.08%), Visa (31.51%) and American Express (24.83%).
Spammers were keen to exploit the popularity of the Apple iPhone smartphone, and that influenced the topics they chose in the third quarter. Criminals started sending out unwanted messages about the iPhone 6 long before the official presentation was held by Apple at the beginning of September. The new smartphone was offered as a prize for different marketing contests and surveys. There were also fraudulent mailings offering big discounts on the official price of the new model. Of course none of these offers had any truth in them; they were solely used to attract users to a fraudulent scheme or a web service that the spammers wanted to promote.
Phishers were also keen to capitalize on interest in the iPhone. Different campaigns throughout the whole quarter used the Apple brand, and each news hook involving the company and its products was pounced upon by the fraudsters.
Kaspersky Lab experts saw several instances where a rapid increase in Apple-related phishing detections could be linked to the launch of new products, such as new MacBooks (end of July) and iPhone 6 (beginning of September). Last year Kaspersky Lab experts registered an increase in detections on product launch dates.
The Ice Bucket Challenge, a popular activity asking participants to douse themselves with cold water and make donations to Project ALS, an organization that fights Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, was another big topic for criminals. In the last quarter Kaspersky Lab experts detected malicious spam mailings inviting victims to watch the video of another IBC participant. However the attachments in these messages contained the malicious Backdoor.Win32.Androm.euop program allowing criminals to take control of the compromised computer.