Report says spam rises in May

Spam is increasing as spammers become more intelligent, according to a report by Symantec.

In its May 2009 Messagelabs Intelligence Report the security company said the number of spam emails sent out in the month had increased by five per cent.

It said much of the new spam comprised messages with little content other than a subject line and a hyperlink to an active valid profile on one of a number of social networking sites.

Symantec said these profiles had been created using random names. Although social networking sites use a feature called Captcha at the point of registration, which involves the user having to read a distorted image of a word and enter that text to be able to continue, Symantec said spammers had used Captcha-breaking tools to get past this.

Paul Wood, a senior analyst at the company, said: “As spam levels continue to increase, we are seeing existing attack techniques combine and morph into one.

“In 2008 Captcha-breaking, social networking spam and the use of webmail for spamming all became popular tactics. Today, the bad guys are using the three together as a triple threat to heighten the effectiveness of their spamming.”

He also pointed out that the emails were sent from valid webmail-hosting providers, which meant they were not spoofed as had been the case in the past.

In addition the security company found that the geographical location of the spammers affected the time of day spam was received and highlighted where they were most likely to be based.

Over a seven-day period, it found people living in America saw spam peak between nine and 10am followed by a drop overnight.

Europeans, however, received a steady stream of spam throughout the working day, and those in the Asia-Pacific region started their day with an inbox full of spam and saw less throughout the day.

“These patterns suggest that spammers are more active during the US working day,” Mr Wood said.

“This could be because most active spammers are based in the US, or because this is when the spammers’ largest target audience is online and likely to respond.”

The company also found that previous suggestions that cybercriminals were more likely to use less reputable websites – such as those containing adult content – to hide malware were wrong.

It said 84.6 per cent of website domains blocked in May for hosting malicious content were well-established domains more than a year old. However, it would not say which sites had been targeted.