High virus rates in New Zealand

MessageLabs Intelligence Report – high virus rates in New Zealand

The latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report shows that there is an oddly high virus rate in New Zealand . Further investigation showed that this figure was related to phishing. In July, New Zealand became the most targeted for phishing attacks with 1 in 111.2 emails comprising a phishing attack.

In addition, the report also reveals that the percentage of spam containing shortened hyperlinks has increased significantly over the last year.

This means that spammers now include a shortened URL in spam messages. These shortened hyperlinks make it harder for traditional anti-spam filters to identify the messages as spam based on the reputation of the domains found in the spam emails.

Further analysis of spam containing shortened URLs revealed that the Storm botnet, which returned to the threat landscape in May 2010, is responsible for the greatest volume of botnet spam containing short hyperlinks.

MessageLabs Intelligence also identified a new, malicious phishing attack using PDF Reader Updates as a hook . The attack was seeking to collect its victims’ credit card details. MessageLabs Intelligence had blocked more than 26,000 of these “PDF Reader Update” phishing attacks.

MessageLabs Intelligence also warns of multi-step targeted attacks in which the attacker first gained unauthorised access to a website belonging to one organisation and uploaded a fake landing page with concealed JavaScript containing malicious code. Next, the attacker sent unsolicited emails purporting to be from a webmail account to select recipients at a second organisation. The emails contained a link to the malicious landing page created earlier on the first organisation’s website.

ENDS

© Scoop Media