Kaspersky Lab's latest "Spam and Phishing Report" has shown that spam emails have become more dangerous, although their volume has declined. At the same time, the level of malicious attempts through mail has increased dramatically. 
In particular, in 2016 in March, Kaspersky Lab's products prevented 22.890.956 attempting to "infect" users through malicious e-mail files, twice as many as those attempted in February of 2016.
From 2012, the level of spam messages in the total email volume is constantly decreasing.
However, the volume of emails containing malicious attachments has increased significantly since the first quarter of 2016 was 3,3 times higher compared to the same 2015 period.
There was also an increase in the volume of ransomware recorded during the quarter, which are often spread via email containing "infected" file attachments (eg Word documents). The main threat actor in this area in the first quarter was ransomware Trojan Locky, which is distributed via email, in different languages, and has been targeted against targets in at least 114 countries. Locky's email contained fraudulent data from financial institutions, cheating users and forcing them to open the dangerous attachment file.
Kaspersky Lab's findings show that digital fraudsters are increasingly using such messages to target Internet users, because browsing the Internet is becoming more secure. Almost all popular browsers have now deployed security and anti-phishing protection tools, making it harder for digital criminals to spread malware through "infected" websites.
In the first quarter of 2016, digital fraudsters tried to lure users to open malicious archives, earning their attention by email about terrorism, an issue that is always in the news. Many countries have stepped up security measures to prevent terrorist attacks, so this has become a particularly popular issue for spam emails.
Μερικοί απατεώνες προσπάθησαν να πείσουν τους παραλήπτες ότι το αρχείο που επισυνάπτεται στο spam email περιείχε μια νέα εφαρμογή για φορητές Appliances, η οποία θα μπορούσε να εντοπίσει μια εκρηκτική συσκευή, μόλις εγκατασταθεί.
Το email τόνιζε ότι το Υπουργείο Άμυνας των ΗΠΑ είχε ανακαλύψει αυτή την τεχνολογία και ότι ήταν αρκετά απλή και προσιτή. Το συνημμένο περιείχε συνήθως ένα εκτελέσιμο αρχείο, το οποίο εντοπίζεται με την κωδική ονομασία “Trojan-Dropper.Win32.Dapato”. Αυτό το κακόβουλο πρόγραμμα μπορεί να υποκλέψει τις προσωπικές πληροφορίες των χρηστών, να οργανώσει επιθέσεις τύπου DDoS και να εγκαταστήσει άλλα κακόβουλα προγράμματα.
Also, even the scammers using the known technique Nigerian spam, resorted to the use of terrorism-related issues in their emails. According to Kaspersky Lab's report, the volume of these emails has increased significantly.
These spammers previously preferred to send lengthy emails that contained a detailed story and links to news to make them more convincing. However, they are now only sending short messages without details, asking the recipients to contact them.
"Unfortunately, we see the previous ones forecasts μας σχετικά με την ποινικοποίηση του spam να γίνονται πραγματικότητα. Οι απατεώνες χρησιμοποιούν διαφορετικές μεθόδους για να τραβήξουν την προσοχή των χρηστών και να ρίξουν τις άμυνές τους. Επίσης, οι spammers χρησιμοποιούν διάφορες γλώσσες και μεθόδους κοινωνικής engineeringς, πολλαπλά είδη κακόβουλων συνημμένων αρχείων, καθώς και μερική προσωποποίηση του κειμένου των email, προκειμένου αυτά να δείχνουν πιο πειστικά. Τα πλαστά μηνύματα συχνά μιμούνται alerts from well-known organizations and services. All of the above means that spam is moving to a new, dangerous level." warns Daria Gudkova, Kaspersky Lab's Spam Analysis Expert.
More information about the spam and phishing landscape for the first quarter of 2016 is available on the site Securelist.com.
