2013 was a year of change in the spam landscape. The volume of spam increased from 2012. We witnessed the decline of a previously-successful exploit kit. The old became new again, thanks to different techniques used by spammers. While we still saw traditional types of spam, we also saw several “improvements” which allowed spammers to…
Read MoreMerianne Polintan
Anti-spam Research Engineer
Nelson Mandela, one of Africa’s most recognizable figures, passed away last December 5. This unfortunate event did not stop cybercriminals from spewing their usual spam campaigns, this time attempting to leverage the African leader’s demise. What is interesting is that even before Mandela’s death, spammers were already using his name to capture users’ attention. Typically, scammers…
Read MoreIn the past few weeks, we’ve seen drastic and noteworthy increases in the number of health-related spam in the wild. Prior to September, this type of spam was relatively rare. However, as September began, these suddenly increased. Over the next few weeks, health-themed spam constituted 30% of the spam we saw, with an average of…
Read MoreAs enrolment for the controversial Affordable Care Act or Obamacare starts today, cybercriminals already had a head start, spewing Obamacare-related spam as early as first weeks of September. Spam containing the terms “medicare” “enrollment” “medical insurance” started surfacing during the first week of September. Some of these spam variants can be easily recognized as such….
Read MoreIn our 2Q Security Roundup, we noted the resurgence of online banking malware, in particular the increase of ZeuS/ZBOT variants during the quarter. While ZeuS/ZBOT has been around for some times, its prevalence shows that it is still a big threat to end users today. For the month of August, 23% of spam with malicious…
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