Shutdown of Disreputable Web Server leads to drastic fall in Global spam

The Cyberoam Q4 2008 Email Threat Trends Report, prepared in collaboration with its partner Commtouch, has brought some interesting trends for our observation.

Spammers and Malware-distributors, who were so far having a field day propagating junk e-mails, got a rude shock when one of their favourite spam webhosts, Calif. based McColo, was pulled off Cyber-space after repeat complaints by web users. As illustrated in the graph, the impact of this event was tangibly felt worldwide, with continuously declined Spam activity for three weeks beginning Nov 11, in which global spam levels plummeted to 59% from average figures of 90% earlier.



Another major development was the frenzy on Barack Obama, lasting during the entire US election-Obama inauguration episode. Spammers started sending junk emails promising anything from Obama-related merchandise to news stories such as “Obama Sex Scandal”, delivering TONS of malware and blended threats in the process. The phenomenon of using celebrities, in general, to send spam got a boost due to the emergence of new international sources for zombie computers, such as Brazil.

Spammers have continued in their efforts to use reputed sites and tools like web-based emails and Google Docs to spread malware. A very popular social interaction site, Classmates.com has been uploading “plug-in downloads” into user computers, to later strike as deadly Trojans.

Web 2.0 media in the categories of pornography and Leisure/Recreation are lately, seeing a resurgence in user generated content turning into vectors for carrying malicious codes. Last but not the least, image-based spam ranging from Chinese/East Asian language characters to junk content written in non-English European languages continues to be a major pain in the neck for email users and organizations who feel frustrated and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of such spam outbreaks.