Recession Special - Spam's free (but the security risks remain real)

A new trend observed by the Cupertino, California company found that scam emails about the current economic gloom are becoming more widespread. The emails, whose subject lines read: ‘Survive the Recession: earn 500 dollars or more a week!’ and ‘I found you a new job [500+ a week]’, are targeted at those who are down on their luck and/or worried about the global economic downturn.

Spam is not only getting more sophisticated, it’s also becoming increasingly difficult for people to determine safe messages from detrimental ones. Symantec also warns of a new attack on financial institutions whereby a spammer poses as a well-known bank and distributes a New Year’s greeting card warning about banking fraud, however, the recipients become fraud victims themselves when they click on the email.

There was good news for a short period at the end of 2008, when spam levels dropped after the hosting company, which aided about half of all Internet spam globally, McColo, was shutdown, said the security firm. But, soon after the San Jose-based ISP that provided hosting to spammers was shut following a Washington Post investigation, new botnets sprang up whilst old botnets began to reappear, after borrowing routes to alternative hosting.

Symantec’s January State of Spam Report found that spam levels are now back on the rise and have crept back up to 80 per cent of their pre-McColo shutdown levels. 

Amanda Grady, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst, Anti-Spam Engineering at Symantec told TelecomTV, "In 2009 we expect to see further integration in the threat landscape between malware, spam and phishing.