Malicious Spam Proliferates

Malicious Spam Proliferates

According to security firm Sophos, the number of spam consisting of dangerous attachments has increase eightfold.


Sophos claims about one in every 416 emails received between July and September was identified as spam, way higher than that of the second quarter which was only one in every 3,333 emails. Such number is attributed to various massive-scale malware strikes. Sophos also said the vilest attack was Agent-HNY Trojan horse, which was spammed and disguised as the Penguin Panic arcade game for Apple iPhones. The virus only infected Windows users.

Most of the spam attacks were launched through social networking websites such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter. Sophos anticipates the continuing rise of spams over the next few months, if not years.

Sophos classified the nations accountable for the most number of unsolicited emails in the third quarter. The US topped the list at 18.9 percent of the total spam sent. Russia is trailing behind at 8.3 percent, followed by Turkey which constituted 8.2 percent of spam.