(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Secure e-mail solutions provider AppRiver (www.appriver.com) has released its year-end spam report and threat for the for 2009. The reports highlight spam and security trends as seen in 2008, as well as key predictions for 2009.
Written by AppRiver senior security analyst Fred Touchette, the “State of Security 2008” report identifies many of the themes of the past year, noting that unsurprisingly, it was novice online users, unaware and uninformed of online threats, who were most likely to fall prey to phishing and malware schemes.
Touchette reports that the most common scams involved using current news-themed emails about events such as oil price fluctuations, or emails purporting to be from well-known entities such as McDonald’s or MSNBC.com to steel victims’ personal information. Other popular phishing methods included sending false messages that appeared to be from the government or trusted banks, as well as emails that prompting users to input usernames and passwords to update their account which are taken by scammers.
AppRiver notes that the take-down of shady web host McColo was the biggest news of the year, leading to a 75 percent world-wide drop in spam. Earlier this week, McAfee (www.mcafee.com) released the first of its new monthly series of spam reports, which also placed McColo’s departure as the top story in recent spam news.
AppRiver also mentioned the shut down of a botnet responsible for an estimated $45 million in damages by Canadian authorities in Quebec earlier in the year, apprehending 17 suspects ranging in age from 17 to 26. The botnet had infected more than a million computers across more than 100 countries and was used for identity theft, other data theft, spamming and denial-of-service attacks.
Another botnet was shut down when the FTC and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs worked together to take down an organized cybercrime ring responsible for botnetâdelivered spam selling weight loss pills, replica watches and several herbal male enhancement products. While the bot was not taken offline completely, it is operating on a much smaller scale now.
Also by Touchette, AppRiver’s “Threat and Spamscape Forecast” for 2009 reports that web-based malware is a trend that will continue to increase, and that there will be more malware devised to attack virtualization platforms such as Windows Virtual PC and VMWare. Touchette also expects mobile malware to grow partly due to the popultarity of Apple iPhone and Google’s Android platform.
Touchette also notes that attacks on job search and social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Monster will continue to rise as more turn to the Internet job hunting as employment falters.
