Feb 12, 2009 : McAfee Reports on February Spam

📅 February 12, 2009 - McAfee's (mcafee.com) security technology research division, Avert Labs, has launched its second monthly spam report, which "E-ticket" airline scam, abuse of free hosting services, and the rise of Chinese spam have topped the security provider's list of online threats.

According to McAfee's "February 2009 Spam Report," the past month has been subject to a highly effective airline email malware campaign that scams tricks users into giving away their personal information. The subject line starts with "E-ticket" followed by a number, and the message body appears to confirm the purchase of a paperless airline ticket. The McAfee report said this is a "clever bit of social engineering that relies on the fear of having one's identity stolen," leading victims to click on the attachment without thinking, leading them to download a file that infects the machine with the ZBot Trojan.

Another major trend that has intensified in the past month is scammers hijacking space on Microsoft's live.com. "We took a sample of libido-enhancing spam over a period of 48 hours and found all of it contained URLs pointing to Windows live.com sites," the report said, and while they note that Microsoft had already disabled 13 percent of the links, even given their vigilance, 87 percent of these sites remained active. Plus, the Microsoft name offers the appearance of legitimacy.

Finally, McAfee made note of a trend that has been long in the making due to the emerging Internet use in Asia. With its increasing number of users, China is overtaking the US spam racket in supplying the world's spam. According to the state-controlled China Internet Network Information Center, China is on track to quickly overtake the US in the number of Internet users. These computers are necessary to be infected by malware, which are used to transmit spam messages.

Most interesting, however, is that China's overall number of zombie computers is down, and McAfee said it's not clear what's happening in China, but the vast amount of infected computers are no longer being used for that purpose.

"Although Chinese computers aren't being used for spam they way they were last year, we're seeing a resurgence which is now putting them in the lead, ahead of the US," McAfee Avert Labs senior vice president Jeff Green said in a statement. "Also, although these zombie computers aren't being used for spam, you have to wonder if they're being used for another purpose."

In January, McAfee released its first spam report in a monthly series that promises to chronicle spam trends and specific campaigns.