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Be ready for a Season's Greetings of another sort, as spammers and other cons prep for the holiday season. Since October is the unofficial start to the holiday season, the rest of the year will be filled with people shopping and researching online. At the same time, criminals are already gearing up for the festivities.
Spam comes home for the holidays.(IMG:J.Anderson)
The newest MessageLabs Intelligence Report notes that the criminals behind the largest botnets, Cutwail, Rustock and Donbot, are already starting to push Spam to inboxes the world over with holiday themes. Some are even starting to push holiday themed Spam for the 2010 holidays, like Valentine’s Day.
While only 0.5-percent of Spam is related to Halloween at the moment, MessageLabs says that they expect close to 500 million spooky emails before the week is out. The majority of this type of Spam links to pharmaceutical or medical Spam sites and comes from the Rustock and Donbot botnets.
Christmas and Thanksgiving are next, and the crooks behind Cutwail know this. Spam from the Cutwail botnet uses both Thanksgiving and Christmas as a theme to sell replica watches. To date, holiday Spam accounts for approximately 2-percent of all Spam. More than 2 billion Thanksgiving or Christmas-themed Spam emails are projected to be in circulation globally each day.
As mentioned, MessageLabs said they are also seeing Spam related to Valentine’s Day, as well as future major events like the 2010 World Cup. The first runs of Valentine’s Day Spam, more than 4 months before the occasion, are being sent from the Cutwail and Rustock botnets. The love letters are pitching pharmaceuticals and other medical items. World Cup related Spam messages are advance-fee fraud or 419-style scams, and include images of Nelson Mandela and the official FIFA logo.
Sadly, these scams work, MessageLabs said, noting that they are worth an estimated $150 billion to underground economies.
“As is typical with spammers this time of year, we are seeing them try to capitalize on the holiday season,” said MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst, Paul Wood.
“Although they may be a bit overzealous, spamming is a numbers game and the spammers have certainly succeeded with volume thus far. Perhaps their early-bird approach is an attempt to compete with the other botnets and get in early to maximize their chances of success.”
The full report is here.
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