Spammers are using holidays and major events to make their mail more appealing.
This is according to the Symantec.cloud Intelligence Report, which shows that more than 10 000 unique domain names were compromised with a redirect script written in PHP that contained a reference to the New Year in the file name.
These redirect scripts were hosted on compromised Web sites, and links to these were included in spam e-mails, says Symantec.
To further entice recipients to open their messages, spammers used additional social engineering techniques by including parameters in the URL to suggest the destination is a social networking site, according to the security software vendor.
Symantec Intelligence expects to see spammers taking advantage of other 'calendar events' like the Chinese New Year celebrations, which ended on the night of 4 February, and the fast-approaching Valentine's Day.
“We also expect to see plenty of spam and malware taking advantage of some of the major upcoming sporting events this year. We are already seeing references to the Summer Olympics in London (27 July to 12 August) as part of 419 or advance fee fraud messages,” says Mark Smissen, business development manager at Symantec.cloud.
According to Symantec, during December, global spam levels dropped, but, in January, they gradually returned to similar levels as in November 2011, which is still lower than the 2011 average.
There was an overall decrease in phishing volumes globally, and January saw SA finally dropping out of the top five countries, notes Symantec.
Based on January 2012 spam volumes, Symantec says Saudi Arabia became the most spammed geography, with a spam rate of 75.5%; China came second with 75.0% of e-mail traffic blocked.
In the US, 69.0% of e-mail was spam, as was 68.7% in Canada. The spam level in the UK was 69.3%; in the Netherlands, spam accounted for 70.7% of e-mail traffic, as well as 68.2% in Germany; 69.1% in Denmark; and 68.6% in Australia.
In Hong Kong, 67.5% of e-mail was blocked as spam, as was 66.7% in Singapore, compared with 65.6% in Japan. Spam accounted for 69.5% of e-mail traffic in SA, and 73.1% in Brazil.
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