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Kaspersky Q3 spam and phishing report
November 2021 by Kaspersky
Kaspersky has released its Q3 report which contains spam and phishing statistics for Q3 2021, which explores scams linked to the Olympics, Euro 2020 and Covid-19.
This summer saw some major international sporting events including; the delayed Euros 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics. This gave cybercriminals and profiteers a golden opportunity to sell fake tickets. Scammers also laid traps for those preferring to watch the action online, paying a subscription with no live broadcast in return.
The report has revealed that in Q3 2021, Kaspersky solutions blocked more than 5.6 million redirects to phishing pages. According to announcements on fake sites, IKEA, Amazon, Tesco and other companies all held prize draws to celebrate a milestone date. Wannabe participants had to perform a few simple actions, such as taking a survey or a spot-the-hidden-prize contest, or messaging their social network contacts about the promotion, and then were asked to provide card details, including the CVV code, to receive the promised payout. That done, the attackers not only got access to the card, but also requested payment of a small commission to transfer the (non-existent) winnings.
Additional key findings include:
Mail Anti-Virus blocked more malicious attachments than in Q2. Our solutions detected 35,958,888 pieces of malware, over 1.7 million more than in the previous reporting period.
In Q3, the Anti-Phishing system blocked 46,340,156 attempts to open phishing links. A total of 3.56% of Kaspersky users encountered this threat.
Safe Messaging blocked 117,854 attempted redirects via phishing links in various messengers. Of these, 106,359 links (90.25%) were detected and blocked in WhatsApp messages. Viber accounted for 5.68%, Telegram for 3.74% and Google Hangouts for 0.02% of all detected links.
