Spam % remains high, with malware attachments & hostile links
For the second week in a row, my volume and percentage of spam has passed 40%.This week I saw 41%, which is down just 2% from the week before. Notably, much of the spam either contained malware in attachments, or had links leading directly to malware exploits.
There were two specific classes of malware threats this week, carried forward from last week: the ACH canceled payment-transaction under review scams, containing the Zbot/Zeus banking Trojan, or 2: fake Facebook Friend Requests, leading to the BlackHole Exploit Kit, plus the Zbot and botnet installers. The preceding links are to articles I have already written, explaining these threats and how you can identify them and deal with them.
While the ACH scams seem to have subsided, the Arabic name Facebook Friend Request threats are still persisting, as of the time I published this.
In a nutshell, from August 29, through September 4, I logged the following spam statistics, using MailWasher Pro, by Firetrust.
Total email received: 431
Amount classified as spam: 181
Percentage of spam: 41%
Number matched by my custom filters: 168
Number caught by my Blacklist: 13
Number identified by DNS Blacklusts: 0
Reported to SpamCop: 17
Individual categories of spam follow...
Percentages of spam by category of filter.
Counterfeit Watches: 14.92% (Leader for 2 weeks)
Fake Facebook Fried Requests (Arabic names): 13.81% (Up by over 10%)
Male Enhancement: 12.15% (About the same as last week)
Pharmaceutical Spam: 11.60% (+3%)
Weight Loss scams (HCG): 11.05% (+2%)
Cialis (counterfeit): 9.39% (-2%)
Zip Attachments (Zbot/Zeus Trojan): 8.29% (Double last week!)
My Custom Blacklist: 7.18% (+5%)
Misc filters: 4.97%
.RU, .RO, or .UA links: 3.31% (No change)
Known Spam Subjects: 2.21%
URL Shortener Spam Link: 1.10%
Updates to my Custom MailWasher Filters:
.Info Sender - in Images and Links,
Known Spam Subjects #4,
Software Spam
New Blacklist entries:
*@nacha.+
*@yourfanbox.com
Note: I write and publish custom spam filters for both the old and new versions of MailWasher Pro.
I use and recommend MailWasher Pro (2011) to screen my incoming POP3 email for spam, scams and virus threats, before downloading anything to my Windows Live Mail email client.
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