By David Hamilton, theWHIR.com
August 7, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — After a four-month decline, spam is heating up this summer due to the upcoming US election and sporting events, a trend that is expected to last well into the fall, according to MX Logic’s threat forecast.
The volume of spam emails rose by almost 16 percent in July, according to the report released Thursday by managed security services provider MX Logic (mxlogic.com), largely due to election, NFL football and Olympic-themed email.
Since the beginning of July, MX Logic has found more “single-line spam” emails, meaning a message containing a compelling subject line based on fake news. The user is then prompted to download a malware-infected codec to view an online video after being lured by headlines like “50 Cent sues Taco Bell and McDonald’s” and “Apple issues recall for 3G iPhone.”
The MX Logic report made special note that there is a “lack of any significant new email-borne threats,” meaning that old viruses and worms like Mydoom.BB and Nyxem.D are still among the top five threats, but they are delivered in a new way — using single-line spam. Single-line spam accounted for between 20 and 25 percent of all of the spam messages processed by the Threat Operations Center in July.
MX Logic warns users that the most prevalent offenders are health and commercial offers, followed by phishing, foreign language and education-themed offers.
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