(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — After stagnating for the first part of the the year, the volume of spam rose by 10 percent from May to July, according to the latest email security report from German email security specialist eleven (www.eleven.de).
According to the report released Thursday, the increase can be traced mainly to casino spam, which more than doubled its share of total spam in July, rising from 7.2 percent to 16.2 percent. As recently as May, casino spam had accounted for only three percent of the total volume.
In June, eleven first encountered JavaScript spam, which uses code obfuscating to make the destination of links difficult to understand, redirecting the user to the spammer’s target page. This trick can also fool spam filters that check email contents for links to known spam pages.
The volume of malware sent via email also continued to rise. Only accounting for 0.1 percent of the total email volume in May, it rose to 0.4 percent in July. Most of this increase can be traced to the Sasfis Trojan, which spread mostly via email masquerading as messages from package delivery and courier services. Sasfis variants, after all, accounted for 71.8 percent of the total malware volume in July.
Phishing attacks have increasingly been directed at online payment services, with PayPal being the prime target. In June 2010, 96.1 percent of phishing emails identified by eleven were PayPal-related.
With a share of 96.4 percent of the total email volume, however, spam remains at record levels. The top spam originators in July 2010 were the US, followed by Brazil and India. Germany dropped to seventh place.
Last month, eleven reported that a German email recipient falls victim to a phishing attack approximately every 20 seconds. The report was based on data collected via eleven’s eXpurgate managed security service, which also found that the favorite tactic of phishers is to spoof online payment services, followed by social networks.
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