Google recently released their quarterly spam trend update, which showed a continued rise from last quarter in spam levels and in types of spam, with new players and techniques showing up in cyberspace, allowing junk e-mail and the like to proliferate with internet speed.
Spam volumes dropped by 70% last November when a major spammer was taken down, but the void was filled within four months. Then on June 4, another large ISP spam source was said to have been dismantled, causing a 30% drop. Since then, spammers have already made back 14% of that volume.
They’ve noticed a return to older spam techniques lately too.
One simple “newsletter” with malevolent links and images inserted into the content unleashed 50% of a typical day’s spam volume in just two hours’ time with Google’s Postini filters detecting more than 11,000 variants.
One of the other trends they’re watching closely is the sudden popularity of “image spam” – a form of spam that rose to prominence in 2007, before most anti-spam filters learned how to block it. The large file size of an image spam can place a heavy load on an email network and they can also include malicious links or content.
June was also an active month for viruses sent as email attachments, otherwise known as “payload viruses.” Volumes rose to their highest level in almost two years as spammers returned to yet another tried-and-true technique to expand their botnets.
Google message security and archiving team member, Amanda Kleha, theorized, “there may be some new players entering the spam game, following the McColo and 3FN takedowns, and these new players are opening with some well-tested techniques. Either way, we’re watching this trend and will share insights as we gain them in the weeks and months ahead.”
Tags: Internet Speed, Internet Trends