Spam and Phishing Landscape: October 2009

Overall spam volumes averaged at slightly over 86 percent of all email messages in September 2009, which is a decrease of 4 percent since July 2009. However, it is considerably greater than September 2008 when spam levels averaged at 78 percent of all email.

Notable this month is that the percentage of spam containing malware has increased, reaching up to 4.5 percent of all spam at one point. When compared to August 2009, Symantec has observed a nine-fold increase in spam containing malware during September. With respect to spam categories, the main movers were Internet spam, which increased  by 3 percent again this month and averaged at 32 percent of all spam; and financial spam, which decreased 3 percent to account for 17 percent of all spam.

Click here to download the October 2009 State of Spam Report, which highlights the following trends:

·         Spam Spotlight : Implications of the Increasing Malicious Spam September 2009: Spam Subject Line Analysis

·         Holiday Spam Campaigns Diversify

·         Russian Spammers Dialing to Work Three Days A Week

·         Career Opportunities @ Spammers.EDU

In addition, the October 2009 State of Phishing Report has also been made available here and highlights the following trends:

·         Symantec observed a 5 percent decrease from the previous month in all phishing attacks

·         Twenty-five percent of phishing URLs were generated using phishing toolkits, a decrease of 21 percent from the previous month

·         There was a 33 percent decrease from the previous month in non-English phishing sites

·         More than 110 Web hosting services were used, which accounted for 11 percent of all phishing attacks. Although the proportion remained the same as in August, there was a 3 percent decrease of total Web host URLs in September

·         Symantec identified an increase in a phishing tactic used in an attack targeting the Internal Revenue Service