Security Response

The unexpected raid and resulting death of Osama Bin Laden shocked the world. As always, spammers were quick to jump on this headline and send a variety of spam messages leveraging the event. The “Fallout from the Death of Osama Bin Laden” section includes samples of some of the spam monitored in different languages.

The effect of the Rustock shutdown from the previous month continued this month. After falling 27.43 percent in March, the average daily spam volume fell another 5.35 percent in April. Compared to a year ago , it is down 65.42 percent. Overall, spam made up 74.81 percent of all messages in April, compared with 74.68 percent in March. Going back a year, the percentage of spam was 89.22 in April 2010.

To find out more, click here to download the May 2011 State of Spam & Phishing Report, which highlights the...

When Brian Krebs posted a report about Rustock botnet takedown, Symantec observed a decline in overall spam traffic. Symantec.cloud posted a blog about this, and the Wall Street Journal is now reporting that Microsoft led this takedown.

On March 16, Symantec saw global spam drop 24.7% compared to March 15. On March 17, global spam volume dropped another 11.9% compared to March 16. Compared to a week prior, the volume on March 17 was down 40.4%.

As we typically see with a drop in global spam volume, the overall spam percentage saw a similar decline when spam volume fell. The increase seen on...

As predicted in last month’s report, average daily global spam volume increased month-over-month for the first time since August 2010. The average daily spam volume increased 8.7 percent in February. This rise in spam volume also increased the overall spam percentage, as spam made up 80.65 percent of all messages in February, compared with 79.55 percent in January.

On the phishing side, we take a look at phishing attempts using fake SSL. Fraudulent sites are becoming more sophisticated and are using fake, or even basic domain validated SSL certificates to fool visitors. An Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate, which turns the address bar green and ensures a more rigorous validation process, is conducted to verify the website owner is who it says it is.

To find out more, click here to download the March 2011 State of Spam &...

In this blog published in January, we followed-up on the spam volume saga as the Rustock botnet returned to action on January 10. At the time, it looked like the holidays were over for spammers. Did the prediction hold up?

Yes, as it turns out. Over the following six weeks, the global spam volume has remained more or less flat. Towards the end of February however, it is showing a bit of a decline.

A similar pattern can be seen for the global spam percentage:

Even though the spam volume has somewhat recovered, it is nowhere near what it was one year ago. This chart shows the global spam volume in the month of February in 2010 and 2011: