Η report of Kaspersky Lab for its landscape spam and phishing threats in the second quarter of 2015 reveals that messages based on real events dominated at this time.
More specifically, in financial frauds of the "Nigerian scam" type, spam messages were observed that took advantage of topics such as earthquake in Nepal, the presidential elections in Nigeria and the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. In this way, the attackers tried to extract personal data and convince Internet users to make voluntary donations.
Although the percentage of spam on the total volume of email decreased by 5,8 percentage points compared to the previous quarter (from 59,2% to 53,4%), the second quarter of 2015 saw a significant increase in the use of global events in spam.
Among other things, there were fake messages asking the recipients to make a donation to help the victims of the earthquake in Nepal. In other malicious bulk mails, scammers tried to lure recipients with the amount of $ 2.000.000, which is supposed to be ready to send to the user as compensation for the newly elected president of Nigeria.
In addition, there have been fraudulent notices for raffles that allegedly gave tickets to the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil in an attempt to persuade recipients to send their personal data to the scammers to receive their "gift".
Η Tatyana Shcherbakova, Antispam Analyst at Kaspersky Lab said: "In the second quarter of 2015, we noticed that spammers used tragic events to fool users. It's a tactic that scammers have used in the past, but with events such as the earthquake in Nepal, which are so much covered by the media world-wide, these messages are likely to cause the compassion of the recipients. To protect themselves, users should not open emails from unknown senders and remember not to follow a link in emai and not open attachments. As many scammers try to make the sender's name and address look more legitimate, this is now more important than ever. "
Kaspersky Lab The countries that targeted malicious missions Email
In the second quarter of 2015, there have been major changes to the list of countries most often targeted by malicious email. Germany (19,59%), which was in fourth place in the first quarter, was at the top. The United Kingdom, which ranked first in the first quarter, fell to second place (6,31%) and Brazil was in third place (6,04%).
The USA (5,03%), traditionally the country most frequently targeted by malicious emails, came in fourth. In addition, Russia (4,74%), which was only in tenth place in the previous quarter, rose to fifth place.
Kaspersky Lab's sources spam
The US (14,59%) and Russia (7,82%) remained the biggest sources of spam. China ranks third in the list with 7,14% of global spam, compared to 3,23% in the previous quarter. Followed by Vietnam (5,04% compared to 4,82% in the first quarter), Germany (4,13% compared to 4,39% in the first quarter) and Ukraine (3,90% compared to 5,56% in the first quarter).
Kaspersky Lab Phishing
In the second quarter of 2015, Kaspersky Lab's anti-phishing system activated 30.807.071 times on consumer computers using company security solutions. In Kaspersky Lab's databases, 509.905 phishing URLs were added during this period.
The percentage of messages spam of their total volume Email
There has been a global reduction in the percentage of spam messages in the overall email traffic since the beginning of the year, but this reduction has almost stopped. In the second quarter of 2015, the relative rate stabilized and ranged between 53,5% in April and 53,23% in June.
Kaspersky Lab Malicious Attachments To Email
The Trojan-Spy.HTML.Fraud.gen βρέθηκε στην κορυφή της κατάταξης των κακόβουλων προγραμμάτων που απεστάλησαν μέσω email. Το πρόγραμμα αυτό είναι μια ψεύτικη σελίδα HTML, η οποία αποστέλλεται μέσω email και μοιάζει με μια σημαντική notice from a large commercial bank, an online store, a software developer, etc. This threat appears as an HTML phishing webpage, where the user has to enter their personal data, which is then forwarded to the digital criminals.
For the complete "Spam and phishing in Q2 2015" report, you can visit the site Securelist.com.
