Spammers Turn to Oil Spill, Paul the Octopus and Phishing Live Chat

By Greg Day, EMEA Security CTO for Symantec | August 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Over nine in ten of all email messages in July were spam. Meanwhile, phishers find a new target with interactive customer support services, according to Symantec’s August State of Spam and Phishing report.

The report found spammers changed focus from the World Cup and shifted back to current events like the oil spill and economy in July. While leveraging news headlines may be an old trick, fraudsters are always looking for new techniques to use in the hunt for users’ information. This month Symantec observed a phishing website spoofing an e-commerce brand’s live support website. The phishing site involved bogus chat sessions to help the page look more authentic, trying to give customers the impression that the phishing website was interactive.

The following trends are also all highlighted in the August 2010 report:

The ICC 2011 Cricket World Cup begins on February 17, 2011, and phishing sites promoting the tournament have already been observed.
Russia recently has been suffering from heat waves which also caused severe wildfires. Russian spammers took this opportunity to send spam promoting air-conditioners.
Paul the octopus has gained international fame as it correctly predicted the winner of Germany’s games at 2010 FIFA World Cup as well as the final. Spammers leveraged this “brand” and sent spam promoting his fortune telling advice.
Blank subject lines were the top spam subject line for the second month in a row, suggesting that spammers are finding that users respond to such messages

The full report can be found here:

http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/other_resources/b-state_of_spam_and_phishing_report_08-2010.en-us.pdf

Paul