The Hindu Business Line : Over 90% of e-mails categorised as spam

Coimbatore, Sept. 43 Over the years, spam has gone from being the most common Internet menace to being the most dangerous weapon in the cyber criminals’ tool kit.

And Trend Micro and Symantec, among other Internet content security software and services providers, have captured a couple of interesting trends in such outbreaks in recent months.

“Hackers capitalise on the user’s weakness and interest by sending out spam mails.

And many of the attacks target the unemployed, fictitious ‘work-at-home’ schemes, new variations targeting classifieds and job boards apart from current events such as the death of Michael Jackson, the H1N1 flu outbreak and the Italian earthquake among others,” says Ms Ratnamala Dam Manna, Director (Security Technology and Response), Symantec Corp.

Year of Spam

Symantec has named 2009 as the ‘Year of Spam’, as over 90 per cent of all e-mails (up to August) were categorised as spam. “While for the informed it may mean mails that are to be deleted, the ignorant ones may be in for big trouble,” says Ms Manna. Researchers at Symantec say they block over 245 million attempted malicious code attacks across the globe every month.

“A vast majority of these are never-seen-before threats and delivered via the Web. Such threats have given rise to the need for new, complementary detection methods such as heuristics, behaviour-blocking and reputation-based security models.”

Attack routes

Since malicious activity remains increasingly Web-based , one form of infection is driven by downloads. Other attacks observed include plug-in applications and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities rather than unpatched browsers.

The report further noted that phishers use IP addresses as part of the host name instead of domain name to hide the actual fake domain name.

While cautioning users against revealing personal information such as social security number, credit card and bank account details or driver’s licence numbers on social networking sites, Trend Micro points out that such information could be used to commit fraud.