AppRiver, LLC is a well known provider of e-mail messaging and Web security solutions. Recently, the company released its mid-year Threat and Spamscape report which constitutes an in-depth summary and analysis of spam and malware trends marked out between January and June 2010. In this period, AppRiver quarantined over 26 billion spam messages. This aids to safe guard its customer base of 45,000 corporations and six million mailboxes.
In a release Fred Touchette, who is the senior security analyst at AppRiver, said that 'Spam today is much more than just a nuisance, it is a vehicle for heavy malware distribution and other serious security threats. For example, more than 1-in-10 junk messages contained a virus during the past six months, making malware distribution a serious cause for concern. In fact, AppRiver has quarantined more than 45 million virus messages in the last 30 days alone.'
The significant points from the mid-year Threat and Spamscape report of AppRiver are as follows:
Spammers hop on green bandwagon: Hackers attack more than 2,000 companies by making use of targeted spear phishing campaigns. Their aim was to steal carbon credits and resell them for a greater profit.
Calamity in Haiti spurs scams and malware: Spammers and malware authors utilized the distressing earthquake in Haiti and the volcanic eruption in Iceland in order to deceive e-mail recipients and Web surfers.
Tax time means malware time. Usually, phishing attacks repeatedly occur around the month of April as a result of the U.S. tax deadline date.
The cheating associated with the FIFA World Cup 2010 was detected by AppRiver as early as January 2010.
Malware masquerades as lawsuit,. In April, AppRiver's filters blocked a malware attack that was attached on an email as an 'official' legal document. The malware gave the impression of a filed lawsuit against recipient companies. It was fabricated using strong social engineering technique intended to cheat the company officials by making them afraid.
Facebook (News - Alert) users targeted frequently, perhaps because of Facebook's popular reputation.
In the last two quarters, 45 percent of all spam traffic originated from Europe, while the U.S. ranks first in the list of spam-producing countries.
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