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Cape Town - More and more often these days fraudsters trying to phish for useful information online are reluctant to rely solely on the human factor and are less willing to wait for users to enter their own data, according to Kaspersky Lab.
Instead, malicious users are now sending out malicious emails seeded with Trojans that steal usernames and passwords, including those for online banking accounts.
Malicious attachments aren’t only found in emails masquerading as forms for Facebook and other popular online resources. They can also be found in emails disguised as official bank messages.
Recently, spammers have begun sending out emails with malicious attachments designed to look like automatic delivery failure notifications sent out by servers.
Another common trick is to make malicious emails look like notifications from well-known online resources and include links to malicious websites.
The percentage of spam in total email traffic has increased by 4.2% to 70.7% in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the first quarter, according to a survey done by Kaspersky Lab.
The percentage of phishing emails in global mail traffic fell by 0.0016% and came to 0.0024%.
The survey found that in the second quarter many emails with malicious attachments were addressed to corporate users.
These emails were disguised as auto-replies, for instance delivery failure notifications or notifications of the arrival of an email, fax, or scan.
"Malicious users expect corporate employees to skim over the details, assume the email is legitimate and open the attachment — releasing a malicious programme," said Kaspersky Lab in a statement.
One unusual feature in the second quarter was the distribution of eCards with malicious attachments.
"In the past these were a common sight at every major holiday, but lately malicious eCard sightings have been few and far between," said Kaspersky Lab.
In the first quarter one of the tricks used by spammers was “white text,” which is essentially random text added to the bottom of an email.
Readers do not notice this because the colour of the text is the same as the background colour.
The idea is to persuade spam filters that the unwanted message is a newsletter.
In the second quarter spammers used more or less the same trick; they added random text, but this time they didn’t even bother to make it “invisible”.
The countries from which most spam are sent is China, the US and South Korea.
The majority of spam emails are still under 1KB and they made up 73.8% of all spam mails.
- Fin24
Instead, malicious users are now sending out malicious emails seeded with Trojans that steal usernames and passwords, including those for online banking accounts.
Malicious attachments aren’t only found in emails masquerading as forms for Facebook and other popular online resources. They can also be found in emails disguised as official bank messages.
Recently, spammers have begun sending out emails with malicious attachments designed to look like automatic delivery failure notifications sent out by servers.
Another common trick is to make malicious emails look like notifications from well-known online resources and include links to malicious websites.
The percentage of spam in total email traffic has increased by 4.2% to 70.7% in the second quarter of 2013 compared to the first quarter, according to a survey done by Kaspersky Lab.
The percentage of phishing emails in global mail traffic fell by 0.0016% and came to 0.0024%.
The survey found that in the second quarter many emails with malicious attachments were addressed to corporate users.
These emails were disguised as auto-replies, for instance delivery failure notifications or notifications of the arrival of an email, fax, or scan.
"Malicious users expect corporate employees to skim over the details, assume the email is legitimate and open the attachment — releasing a malicious programme," said Kaspersky Lab in a statement.
One unusual feature in the second quarter was the distribution of eCards with malicious attachments.
"In the past these were a common sight at every major holiday, but lately malicious eCard sightings have been few and far between," said Kaspersky Lab.
In the first quarter one of the tricks used by spammers was “white text,” which is essentially random text added to the bottom of an email.
Readers do not notice this because the colour of the text is the same as the background colour.
The idea is to persuade spam filters that the unwanted message is a newsletter.
In the second quarter spammers used more or less the same trick; they added random text, but this time they didn’t even bother to make it “invisible”.
The countries from which most spam are sent is China, the US and South Korea.
The majority of spam emails are still under 1KB and they made up 73.8% of all spam mails.
- Fin24
