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Bitdefender offers insight on spam and their malicious attachments

Announcement posted by BitDefender 27 Apr 2012

Malicious emails pose a great threat to user safety online

SYDNEY & AUCKLAND April 27, 2012 – With 264.6 billion spam messages sent per day, roughly 90% of the overall e-mail traffic over the Internet, the modern day spam is a lot easier to find.

As the number of spam with malicious attachments grows constantly, we wanted to see what exactly cyber-crooks try to deliver along with these spam messages.

Over a period of two weeks, we collected over 2 million spam samples in order to grab a significant variety of spam messages to see what kind of attachments they carry around. 

Our results are as follows: from the pool of spam messages, 1.14% carries attachments. Although spam messages are potentially dangerous by nature, some specific attachments pose a greater threat to user safety.

A closer analysis of the attachments revealed that 10% are rigged with malware or carry phishing forms. This number may not seem that scary, but extrapolating to the full scale of the phenomenon - 264.6 billion spam messages sent per day would mean approximately 300 million spam e-mails with malicious attachments and phishing sent daily.

The attachment breakdown by type revealed that 29.74% is made of HTML pages (either phishing or commercial offerings), followed by archives (9.6%) and DOC files with 6.26%. Other common attachments are made of images, executable files, XLS spreadsheets; PDF and audio files gathering less than 1% from our 2 million spam samples.

Of particular importance is the presence of PDF files rigged with JSs and the DOC / DOCX collection. They are a known vector of infections at the corporate level since these file formats are commonly used in business operations and not blocked by default by the company’s firewall.

Most executable attachments were found to carry generic e-mail worms (Worm.Generic.24461 and Worm.Generic.23834), as well as generic viruses (Win32.Generic.497472 and Win32.Generic.494775). Other e-oddities identified in the attachments are calendar invitation requests for one-on-one business discussions with the spammer, audio advertisements, but also executable files infected with the 7-year old Win32.Worm.Mytob.C@mm mass mailer notorious for the takedown of the CNN Live services on August 16, 2005.

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For further information about Bitdefender, please contact

Olivia Meena
Howorth Communications
02 8437 5335

Olivia@howorth.com.au

About Bitdefender

Bitdefender is the creator of one of the world's fastest and most effective lines of internationally certified internet security software. Since 2001, the company has been an industry pioneer, introducing and developing award-winning protection. Today, Bitdefender technology secures the digital experience of around 400 million home and corporate users across the globe.

Recently, the company has won a range of key independent recommendations in the US, UK and across Europe, including ConsumerSearch, Which?, Stiftung Warentest and Taenk. Bitdefender antivirus technology has also finished top in leading industry tests from both AV Test and AV-Comparatives. More information about Bitdefender's antivirus products is available from the company's security solutions press room. Additionally, Bitdefender publishes Malware City providing the latest updates on security threats and helping users stay informed in the everyday battle against malware.