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Brazil Earns Top Spam Honors In January
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2009-02-04
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AppRiver says January saw a 120% increase in total email traffic. Of nine million messages, over 97 percent were spam or carried a virus, according to the company's Threat and Scamscape Report for February.
 | | Brazil Earns Top Spam Honors In January |  |
Most spam in January, the vast majority, originated in Europe (34%) and Asia (27%), with a large increase from South America (19%). It's possible the McColo takedown severely lessened the amount of spam originating from North America (12%).
Brazil, actually, became the spammiest nation on Earth last month, tripling previous levels and taking the USA's spot as the world's top spammer. Not because the Ukraine didn't try-despite a 930% year-over-year increase and roughly 150 million spam messages, the former Soviet republic managed to make only the top eight.
After Brazil, USA, India, China, Russia, Turkey, Columbia, Ukraine, Korea, and Poland round out the world's most spammy nations in January.
Methods used by spammers have gotten more sophisticated. Spoofing has become popular as scammers try to trick recipients into thinking the email is from a recognized authority source. AppRiver says they've intercepted spoofs appearing to be from Men's Health magazine, Omaha Steaks, Microsoft, Food Network, and the IRS. Many carried attachments or graphical links to Canadian pharmacies.
The Conficker worm-aka Downadup, Kido-continues to be the malware to watch. Conficker should have been reasonably contained by a patch issued by Microsoft in November closing up a vulnerability in Windows Server Service RPC. Those who did not install the patch are still vulnerable to this sophisticated worm that has already spread to at least 5 million PCs, mostly in countries other than the US and UK.
The reigning theory behind Conficker's spread in countries like China, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Taiwan, and India is the prevalence of pirated Windows operating systems where the automatic update features have been turned off for fear of detection.
This month, Waledac is the worm waiting to swallow up everything. The reincarnation of Storm, this botnet has picked up where it left off during the US Election and Christmas season by sending out Valentines and the unromantic kind of Trojans.
About the Author:
SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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