Every sensational event is exploited by spammers.
This is according to Maria Namestnikova, senior spam analyst at Kaspersky Lab, who explains that spammers take advantage of users' curiosity. “Users are more eager to open a message with some sensational subject to find out something shocking or interesting,” she says.
Namestnikova says spammers use shocking news to coax users into opening malicious attachments or to click on infected links. According to her, spammers also use sensational events to make their messages appear more realistic.
She points out that while users are becoming aware that mails claiming the receiver has won a prize are probably fraudulent, the use of sensational themes brings something new to a well-known scheme, and users may be unprepared for this.
According to Kaspersky Lab, October saw spammers exploiting the deaths of Apple founder Steve Jobs and former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to dupe users. Spammers sending the Gaddafi e-mails claimed to be relatives and former officers of Gaddafi, offering a cut of his treasures. Some Steve Jobs e-mails claimed Jobs was alive, while others provided “information” about how the company reacted to the news of his death.
Malware in spam
Kaspersky Lab reports that, in October, the share of malicious files found in all e-mails amounted to 2.5%, a drop of two percentage points compared to September.
Russia, the US and the UK were the three countries with the highest rates of e-mail virus detection, at 16.84%, 11.46% and 8.80%, respectively. SA came in at 10th place, with 3.27% (an increase of 1.2 percentage points from September).
A Trojan was the most common malicious program appearing in e-mails for October (Trojan-Spy.HTML.Fraud.gen). It appeared in 13% of all malware spread via e-mail during the month.
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