Security software vendor Panda has not observed any revolutionary new trends in the distribution of spam and malware via e-mail. This is largely because existing methods are still serving the online criminal community well, it says.
Jeremy Matthews, head of Panda Security's sub-Saharan operations, says Google Adwords has been at the centre of one of the most notable attacks over the last quarter.
"This type of attack uses social engineering to trick users into revealing confidential details (bank account numbers or passwords)," he says.
"Aimed at the owners of Google Adwords accounts, the messages include subjects such as 'your adwords google account is stopped' or 'account reactivation' and include seemingly legitimate links.
"If users click the link, however, they are taken to a page that appears genuine and are prompted to enter their confidential details which will immediately fall into the hands of cyber-crooks," Matthews says.
Tax information continues to be another favourite of spammers. In April, coinciding with the period for filing tax returns in the US, attackers distributed mail with subjects such as: "Get a fast tax refund free" or "Get fast relief for IRS tax debt". In most cases, the aim of these attacks was to obtain confidential details such as bank account numbers or physical addresses.
The Blogspot platform has also been used to host and distribute malicious content.
Perhaps as a result of the growing awareness by Blogspot and its attempts to counter this type of content, spammers have begun to use other platforms, adds Matthews.
Blogdrive fell victim in this second quarter to spammers, who launched a wave of comments at the platform containing links to pornographic Web sites.
The zombies live!
Meanwhile, Panda estimates there were about 10 million zombie computers online sending spam and e-mails with malware every day during the second quarter of this year.
Turkey was the country with the most zombie computers (11% of the global total), followed by Brazil (8.4%) and Russia (7.4%). The US, which in the first quarter accounted for 5% of all zombies, is now in ninth place with 4.3% of the total.
"This vast number of 'zombies' continues to be largely responsible for the avalanche of spam suffered by users and companies - in Q2, an average of 74% of all mail received was spam," says Matthews.
"This is not just annoying for users, who have to delete all of this mail, but in corporate environments it has important repercussions on productivity and resource consumption," adds Matthews.
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