Spam is Getting More Malicious
November 11, 2009
Symantec has released two new reports for the month of November - the State of Spam, and the State of Phishing (both PDFs). The reports highlight a dramatic increase in spam that contains malware. On top of that, junk and malicious email now accounts for close to 9 out of 10 email messages.
The security firm says that a new generation of "Spam Princes" are rising, and that the Asia Pacific region, Japan, and South America have surpassed North America, with regards to where spam is originating from.
"Rising spam levels originating from South America, Asia Pacific and Japan are not altogether surprising when you consider the massive growth of internet connections in these regions," says Amanda Grady, Principal Analyst, Symantec. "Meanwhile, the increased threats to social networking websites is interesting because it shows spammers are hiding behind the reputation and brand trust built by legitimate companies. Social networking sites that have a large user base will continue to be targets of malicious and phishing emails."
Symantec shares the following findings:
- In October, an average of 1.9% of all spam messages contained malware. This equates to a 0.6% increase from September, when the number of messages containing malware hit a maximum of 4.5% of all spam
- Symantec observed a 17% increase from the previous month in all phishing attacks
- 30% of phishing URLs were generated using phishing toolkits; an increase of 24% from the previous month
- Symantec observed a 45% increase from September in non-English phishing sites
- More than 97 Web hosting services were used, which accounted for 8% of all phishing attacks; a decrease of 19% in total Web host URLs when compared to the previous month
Symantec's report of an increase of malware-infected spam is made even more unsettling as news reports surface of computer viruses infecting unknowing victims' machines with child porn.
Have You Read This?
> Stealth Phishing Attack Looks Like Internal Email
> Symantec Urges Windows Users to Patch Systems
Usage of Mobile Web and Apps Doubles in 2 Years
October 29, 2009
According to AdMob, which claims it is the world's largest mobile advertising platform, mobile web and application use has doubled over the past two years. In September, the firm received over 100 million ad requests from 14 countries, and over 10 million ad requests from 64 countries.
AdMob released its Mobile Metrics report for September, which highlights the rapid growth in usage of mobile web sites and apps on new devices in the past year.
In September of 2008, the Motorola RAZR was the top device in the US and the iPhone was the only touchscreen device in the top 10. This year, things have changed a bit. The lost of the top 10 devices includes five with touchscreens, six with Wi-Fi capabilities, and six with application stores.
"These devices are responsible for a much higher percentage of mobile usage than their share of handsets sold," says AdMob. "However feature phones like the Samsung R450 and Motorola RAZR V3 still represent 60 percent of ad requests in the US. The strong mobile Web usage on these feature phones is likely driven by unlimited data plans."
Other highlights from the report include:
- In September 2007 AdMob had 1.6 billion ad requests, in September 2008 5.1 billion, and in September 2009 10.2 billion.
- Nearly every region of the world experienced immense growth in the past two years, with North America, Asia, Western Europe, Oceania and Latin America seeing a six-fold increase in traffic since September 2007.
- Worldwide iPhone and iPod touch traffic increased 19 times from September 2008 to September 2009 in the AdMob network.
- In September 2009 42 percent of requests in the US were made from Wi-Fi capable devices. 18 percent of actual US requests were made over a Wi-Fi connection in September 2009 compared to only 5 percent in September 2008.
- Devices running on the Android Operating System (OS) accounted for 17 percent of smartphone traffic in AdMob’s network in the US in September 2009, up from 13 percent in August 2009. The HTC Dream (G1) was the number three device and the HTC Magic was the number 10 device in September 2009 in the US. As with the iPhone OS, much of the Android traffic in AdMob’s network came from applications.
AdMob's data is based on usage of handsets and smartphone devices during the month of September in their network of over 15,000 mobile sites and apps. AdMob's market share is calculated by the percentage of requests received from a particular handset. The company deems this a measure relative of mobile web and application usage.
Have You Read This?
> App Store Gets Twice the Downloads of Android Market
> That's a Lot of Mobile Advertising!
> What's Your Favorite iPhone App?
