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Q3 Spam Trends Statistics & Analysis

Spam volume returned to record highs in Q3 with fairly steady monthly increases throughout the summer. The acquisition of innocent machines via email and Web-based infections continued in Q3, with over 5,000 new zombies created every hour. The United States continued its role as the largest originator of spam messages, nearly doubling its worldwide share from 16.6% in Q2, 2008 to 32.1% in Q3. The Q3 report further discusses the following topics in detail:

– Q3 saw the emergence of "Breaking News" spam as a new vehicle that
enticed readers to click for breaking news flashes with interesting and
provocative headlines.
– Misguided "Delivery Status Notifications" made a strong resurgence
onto the "Most Common Spam" list.
– Spammers continue to leverage election topics to lure users. After the
second presidential debate on October 7th, Obama gained popularity among
spammers, and over 80% of election-related spam currently bears his name.
– Secure Computing’s TrustedSource Labs estimates the number of
worldwide U.S. election-related spam email to be approximately 100 million
messages per day.

Malware Statistics and Analysis

– The United States and China dominate the world in the number of hosted
Websites which distribute malware, with nearly 60% of all malware-infected
URLs served from these two countries. In terms of phishing attacks, the
United States and the Netherlands host nearly 60% of all URLs used.
– Phishing attacks spiked significantly following the announcements of
various bank failures in late September. While there was no strong trend
towards using any one specific bank or bank failure, overall increases in
phishing activity in the days following each major announcement were
recorded.
– Previously, successful SQL injection attacks on legitimate Websites
included links directing users to one of a few dozen or so malicious sites.
This summer, however, more attacks were launched where each infected page
included a link to a unique and individualized malicious site (a 1-to-1
infection/attack ratio).
– A large increase in the number of heavily promoted phony
malware/spyware removers or "scareware" occurred at the end of the quarter.
Secure research expects this to be an increasing problem that will rapidly
evolve to a greater level of sophistication.

Predictions Moving Forward

Secure Computing Research offered the following predictions for the rest of the year and into 2009:

– During the ’06 holiday season, mail volumes reached a record 100
billion daily messages. As we enter the ’08 season, we’re over 200 billion
messages. Secure predicts a 25% increase in Q4, and new records for mail
and spam volumes.
– As the global financial crisis continues, criminals will take
advantage of the panic and fear among consumers and increase their targeted
phishing attacks substantially.
– With upcoming holiday spam increases combined with the mounting use of
blended threats, spammers will increasingly use the lure of free coupons
and gift cards.
– Today, most malware attacks are financially motivated and target end-
users. In the coming year, we believe there is a greater likelihood of
attacks meant to manipulate public opinion in order to exploit the stock
market.
– Going into 2009 and beyond, politically motivated attacks will become
more widespread, such as attacks on national cyber infrastructure by
hackers. Denial-of-Service and Website compromise attacks against key
government and economic cyber resources of Estonia and Georgia were
foreshadowing things to come.
– In 2009, Web attack toolkits will add new target platforms to their
arsenal of "supported" targets. The iPhone is one such candidate, as are
"Web 2.0" social platforms such as Facebook and MySpace. As the popularity
of these platforms increase, the likelihood of them being targeted rises as
well.
– By the end of 2009, about half of all Web-borne malware will likely be
hosted on compromised legitimate Websites as it becomes increasingly
difficult for criminals to purchase malware hosting services from companies
that once looked the other way.

Over the course of Q3 the TrustedSource reputation system was able to identify over 600 new Websites that have been deployed and tagged with a malicious reputation prior to serving any malicious content. Identifying these Websites proactively through the use of traffic analysis and examination of historical connections to criminal individuals or networks is now essential as they are increasingly used to deploy zero-day/zero-hour malware code that is not detected by the traditional signature-based, anti-malware products.

Secure Computing researchers recommend that both enterprises and consumers assure their software and patches are up-to-date, and that they implement a multi-layered approach to preemptively detect and block attacks. Appliances utilizing Secure Computing’s advanced TrustedSource global reputation system and Secure Web Anti-Malware detection technology put organizations a giant step ahead of others both in protecting against existing threats, and new malware or variants.