Spam levels now at 90 percent says Symantec - junk mail arriving like clockwork

by Steve Ragan - May 27 2009, 17:00

The May MessageLabs Intelligence Report is out, and according to Symantec, Spammers are working around the clock to reach your inbox. The report highlights the continuing trend to hijack legit domains for Malware infections, the targeting of the automotive sector for Spam campaigns, and the jump of the overall Spam level online to 90.4 percent.

Social networks were a hotbed of hosted content for spammers. The majority of Spam in May was comprised of messages with very little content other than a subject line and valid hyperlink. Each hyperlink pointed to a different active profile on one of a number of major social networking environments.

“As spam levels continue to increase, we are seeing existing attack techniques combine and morph into one,” said Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Senior Analyst. “In 2008 CAPTCHA-breaking, social networking spam and the use of webmail for spamming all became popular tactics. Today, the bad guys are using the three together as a triple threat to heighten the effectiveness of their spamming.”

In addition, the MessageLabs report determined that geographic location plays a role when people receive Spam. According to their research, US residents see Spam peak between 9 and 10 a.m. local time and a drop overnight, while Europeans are more likely to receive a steady stream of Spam throughout the workday. Those in the Asia-Pacific region start their day with an inbox full of Spam and see less trickling in throughout the day.

“These patterns suggest that spammers are more active during the US working day,” Wood said. “This could be because most active spammers are based in the US, according to data from Spamhaus, or because this is when the spammers’ largest target audience is online and likely to respond.”

The report shows that 35 percent of the Spam recorded originated from the Americas (including North and South America), 32 percent from Europe, and 28 percent from Asia. Most of the Spam arrived thanks to known botnets, with Donbot being the most active, followed by the Rustock, Cutwail, and Bagle botnets. Almost all of the Russian Spam originated from the Cutwail botnet, Symantec said.

On the Phishing front, one in 405 emails were Phishing related, which is a small increase over April’s totals. Malware laced Spam, accounting for one in 318 emails, actually fell by 0.01 percent in May. Doesn’t that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

The most Spam seen by industry is the Automotive sector, with a spam rate of 89.2 percent. After that, Spam levels reached 88.1 percent for Healthcare, 87.9 percent for Agricultural, 87.5 percent for Manufacturing, and 87.4 percent for Retail. Virus activity in the Education sector rose by 0.04 percent and remains positioned as the most targeted vertical with 1 in 112.5 emails being infected, Symantec reported.

Overall, aside from the insight into the time of day for Spam to arrive, not much has changed since April. All the report serves as is a reminder to tighten the level of filtering on the network and to deal with it as best as you can.

At the end of 2008, when Spam levels dropped thanks to the loss of McColo, there was a nice lull in the levels of junk traffic. Now, the hydra has grown its head back, so things are back to normal. Sadly, no one has come up with a way to kill the problem completely, and as long as there is money to be made, Spammers will continue to keep things at a steady pace.

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